


Khemu of the Twenty First Century

by VampireBadger



Series: Through Time [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Kids, Modern Fic, Time Travel, side fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-04-17 17:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 24,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14194434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampireBadger/pseuds/VampireBadger
Summary: Spin off from Bayek of Nowhere, Father of Nothing.Khemu's been given a second chance at life, and brought into the twenty first century with his father. Now, he just needs to learn to live in this new place and new place time, where his dad is busy saving the world, his best friend is a Sage, and absolutely everything is different.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a spin off fic from 'Bayek of Nowhere, Father of No One.'  This chapter is set shortly after chapter eighteen of that fic.

Of all the things Khemu misses most about his old life in Egypt, two thousand years ago, the one he misses most has to be the people. His mother, and his friends. He understands, in a deep, sad way, that he's never going back and they'll never come here. There's nothing he can do about it, and at least his dad's here, so Khemu clings to him and doesn't think too hard about everyone else.

But that doesn't mean he's going to turn down the chance to make new friends.

He lives in a warehouse full of grownups trying to save the world. Mostly, as far as Khemu can tell, that means lying around all day in front of computers called animi, and even though he sort of gets what a computer is, he doesn't understand how that's going to help save the world. It's just boring, and the first person—besides his dad—that catches Khemu's attention is the Sage.

For a long time, that's all he hears people call him.  _Don't go near the Sage! Stay away from the Sage—he's dangerous._ Only he's just a kid, right around Khemu's age. And all he ever does is sit in a corner, quiet and watching everything that happens.

Khemu doesn't know much English. His first language is Egyptian, and he'd picked up a few words of Greek, mostly from his mother. She was from Alexandria (which used to sound  _so_ far away to Khemu, before he came here), and she'd teach him words sometimes. English, on the other hand, is new. Khemu's dad says he's learning fast, but Khemu knows that's just because he doesn't have anything else to do except sit around and listen to people's conversations. He just hopes it's enough.

One busy afternoon, when no one's paying attention to Khemu, he ducks and dodges his way through the tight rows of animi, until he makes it to the space that the Sage has pretty much carved out for himself—under a supplies table, all the way in the back, in the shadows.

"Hello," he says, holding out a hand and enunciating clearly around the foreign words. "Me—I… I'm Khemu."

The Sage stares at him, his expression blank. Khemu wonders if he's even saying the words right.

"Khemu," he says again, because at least he knows he's saying  _that_ word right, and he points to his chest. "You?" He reaches his arm out to point at the Sage instead.

The Sage stares at Khemu for a long time, then lets his gaze drop slowly down to Khemu's finger. He reaches a hand up, wraps it around Khemu's finger, and pushes it down. Khemu doesn't resist, just urges again, "You… who?

The Sage—the boy, takes his time answering. Khemu isn't sure if the boy understands him or not, but finally when Khemu has almost given up on him—

"…lijah."

"Lijah?" Khemu repeats.

"Elijah," the boy says, voice just a little bit stronger than the first time.

"Good name," Khemu says, although he has no idea if it's good or bad. Like everyone else he's met here, it mostly just sounds weird to him. But he grins, to try and make Elijah smile back, but he just keeps that same blank look on his face. With his dull expression, his mismatched eyes and his wild, curly hair flaring around him, he doesn't look all the way normal just then.

"I guess," Elijah says, after a brief pause.

He doesn't seem too interested in talking, but Khemu tries to justify to himself that he also doesn't seem  _uninterested_  in talking, exactly, and maybe Khemu's just not as good with his new English words as he thinks he is. "Wanna play?" he asks, levering himself up from cross legged to crouching.

"Why?" Elijah asks, and Khemu huffs in exasperation. He doesn't have enough words to explain, so he just grabs Elijah's hand and walks backwards out from under the table, dragging the reluctant Sage out with him. When they're both out and standing, Khemu thinks hard for a second, trying to remember the words, then says, "Let's play."

"I don't play," Elijah says, and Khemu rolls his eyes so hard they almost hurt. He's just been sitting around under a table for the whole time he's been here, and he must be bored stiff right now.

"Play," he insists.

Elijah frowns. "I don't play," he says again.

"Please?" Khemu asks, bouncing a little on the soles of his feet. He wishes desperately that he spoke better English, or that Elijah knew Egyptian—he could be so much more convincing if they could have a real conversation. So, since he doesn't have words, he reaches out and taps Elijah on the shoulder. " _Tag_ ," he says, and takes off running, hoping Elijah will  _get_ it—he doesn't know the English word for the game, or even if kids in the future play tag, so he'd just blurted out the Egyptian word and gone running off.

He hears footsteps behind him (Elijah? He hopes?) and runs faster, rounding a corner and thundering up the stairs into the mostly empty upstairs hallway. He's maybe halfway down it when someone falls into him, and he tumbles to the floor.

Elijah lands next to him.

" _Tag_ ," the other boy says, breathing hard, and Khemu is a little surprised to hear him echo the Egyptian word Khemu himself had used. He's even  _more_ surprised when the boy says, in fluent (if still) Egyptian, "What language is this?"

Khemu turns his head, and finds himself face to face with Elijah, only a few inches away. "Egyptian," he says. "How do you speak it if you don't even know what it is?"

"Sometimes I just know things," Elijah says. "I don't always get to know why."

"But who taught you?" Khemu insists. "You must have learned it somewhere."

"No," Elijah says. "I just know."

Khemu makes a face as he tries to wrap his mind around that. People don't just learn how to speak other languages without trying, and if they do then that's not  _fair_ , because Khemu worked really hard on Greek for his mom, and he's still bad at it. Then he shrugs, shoulders rubbing up against the floor, and reaches over to tap Elijah on the shoulder. "Tag!" he says, and scrambles away. For a second, he thinks Elijah isn't going to follow.

And then he hears footsteps behind him again, and grins because maybe Elijah knows languages but  _he_ knows how to make a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think, if you want to see more of Khemu and Elijah, or whatever else. :)


	2. Chapter 2

 

Khemu follows Elijah around for the rest of the day, poking and prodding at him to keep playing. But the next morning, when Elijah goes downstairs, there's no sign of Khemu. Elijah settles back in to wait, watching the stairs carefully.

When noon comes, and Khemu still hasn't come to bother Elijah, he starts to get a little bit curious.

It's a surprising emotion, and Elijah spends some time sitting in his normal nest under a table on the edge of the ground floor workspace, watching the animus users and chewing over the idea of Khemu in his mind.

There's no reason for him to care where Khemu is or what he's doing. Khemu is unimportant. Khemu is here because of an accident, and by all rights he should be dead. Khemu is a distraction.

Khemu is usually here by now.

Elijah quietly unfolds himself from his awkward, half cross legged position under the table, and edges around the crowd to get to the stairs. No one is particularly interested in him, as per usual, and he makes it to the stairs without any trouble. He's only halfway up when he runs into Bayek coming down.

Elijah slides his gaze away from the man and doesn't slow down, but before he can pass Bayek, the man reaches out to grab his shoulder. Elijah stops in place, staring sullenly up at Bayek. He doesn't want to talk to him right now, but he doesn't have a hope of getting loose.

Bayek sits down on the closest step, and pulls Elijah a little closer. "Listen to me, child," he says, which Elijah hates. He's no child. He knows too much. "You say you need to be here, and so far you haven't done anything to make me think you shouldn't be allowed. But Khemu is my son. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," Elijah says. "I'm not an idiot."

"If you hurt him," Bayek says. "If you ever raise a finger against him, there will be consequences." He stands up again. "You know a lot of things, Elijah. Know  _that_."

Elijah hasn't even considered hurting Khemu. He doesn't have a reason to, and it would only complicate thing. Besides that, Khemu is at least a year older than he is, and clearly spends a lot of time outdoors, running around and probably exercising. Elijah spends a lot of time waiting, mostly. Khemu could wipe the floor with Elijah, if he ever tried. "Alright," he says. "I'll remember that."

Bayek sighs, and his face goes… complicated. There are a lot of emotions gathered there, none of which Elijah is confident he can identify. People have always been hard for him to get a handle on. It's a lot of effort for him to be able to look at someone's face, to recognize the expression, and to match it with the emotion they must be feeling. And that's when it's something simple—fear, anger, sadness, the ones Elijah is used to seeing. Something like this, with all kinds of feelings mixed up in it, might as well be a foreign language to Elijah.

"Please let go of me," Elijah says, and when Bayek grudgingly releases him, Elijah slips past him, up the stairs to look for Khemu. He finds him easily enough—there are only a couple other people up here, some animus users that need to take a break to avoid the bleeding effect. Khemu's sprawled out on the floor with his chin in his hand, scrolling languidly through a tablet in front of him. It's probably the most still Elijah has seen Khemu since he arrived here.

Elijah stops in the doorway, remembers the other people in the room, and walks to Khemu. "Why are you up here?" he asks.

"Dad wanted to talk to me," Khemu mumbles.

_"You could find a better friend than Elijah, Khemu."_

_"No I couldn't. There's no other kids here."_

_"He's dangerous, and I_ need  _you to understand that. I need you to stay safe."_

_"But…"_

_"Khemu. Promise me you're going to be careful."_

"I'm not dangerous," Elijah says, and Khemu turns around to look at him, although he won't meet his eyes. He can still feel… he  _knows_  the conversation Bayek and Khemu had before he came upstairs, and it leaves a sort of sour taste in the air.

"Dad says you are."

"He's wrong." Slowly, Elijah sits down close to Khemu, not really believing that he's doing this. He's never had a friend before, never even tried. There's something pulling him toward Khemu, because Khemu is  _different_ , and Elijah has been different all his life. He wouldn't have to be the only one anymore.

Reluctantly, Khemu meets his eyes. "Then why do you act like that?"

"Like what?" Elijah asks, even though he knows. He wants to hear the words Khemu is going to use to describe it.

"Blank," Khemu says, after thinking it over. "You're not a whole person, are you? You never learned how to be like a normal person."

Elijah leans forward, and wrapping his arms around his knees. This is hard to talk about, because no one ever understands him. They shout at him for telling stories, or they tell him he's wrong, or they look at him like—

He swallows.

"I remember the day I was born," he says matter of factly.

"No you don't," Khemu interrupts. "Nobody can remember being a baby."

Elijah's hands curl like claws around his knees. So tight they almost hurt. "I remember," he says (again, more quietly), "The day I was born."

This time, Khemu doesn't interrupt.

"I remember already knowing so much," Elijah says. "I already knew who I was. I knew a lot of things I shouldn't have. When I started to walk, and talk, I wasn't learning how to do it. I already knew how, I was just waiting for my body to catch up with the things I knew. When other kids were… growing up, and learning how to… rely on people, and feel things, and care about things, I never needed any of that. I already knew everything I needed to know, and sometimes I just… know more, and I don't know why, so why would I need anyone to teach me anything? Why would I need anyone?"

Khemu pushes himself up so he's sitting, facing Elijah. For a long time he studies him in silence. Then he asks, "Is that all true?"

"Yes." He's waiting for the inevitable reaction, but Khemu's still thinking. Finally he scoots forward, stopping so close to Elijah that their knees touch. "You're weird," Khemu informs him.

Elijah manages a bitter smile. "I know."

"And I don't think I get all that stuff you said."

"No one ever does."

Khemu shakes his head. "But I still like playing with you."

Elijah looks at him, a little sheepish. After all, hadn't he come up here to find Khemu precisely  _because_ the other boy hadn't come down to play? "We can still do that," he says.

"Yea." Khemu nods. "And then we'll figure out all the other stuff." He springs to his feet, and offers Elijah a hand. "Come on. I can teach you a new game." His grin spreads across his face. "I bet you  _anything_ you don't know it."

Elijah finds himself hoping he doesn't. "Okay," he says, grabbing Khemu's hand to pull himself up. "Just… don't tell your dad, alright?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, updating the side fic before the main fic. xD I just couldn't resist getting a little bit more into Elijah's messed up head.


	3. Chapter 3

Khem's dad  _hates_ it, but Elijah has taken to sleeping close to them at night. The two of them have their big pile of blankets, where Khemu can curl up against his dad and sleep safely, even with all the strangers around them.

Usually, Khemu gets sent upstairs to bed early, just because he's a kid, which isn't fair. Elijah doesn't really have anyone to send him up to bed early, because there's no one that takes care of him the way Khemu has his dad to take care of  _him_ , but he'll go up to bed with Khemu, and the two of them will lie on the floor and talk as the sun sets and the light in the room fades, until everyone else heads up to bed. Then Elijah will retreat to a far corner of the room, where he sleeps alone.

Khemu  _loves_ those talks. When it's just the two of them whispering under the blankets instead of sleeping. Elijah's a hard person to get to know, sometimes friendly, sometimes cold, sometimes just very scared. But Khemu just thinks that makes him that much more interesting.

"Who's Desmond?" Elijah asks tonight.

"What?" Khemu flops over on his blankets to look at Elijah. He's usually the one asking Elijah questions, not the other way around. "I think he's Dad's friend. Why?"

"I hear people talk about him a lot," Elijah says. "And then they look at me like I'm supposed to say something, but I don't know what."

"I thought you knew everything," Khemu says, and Elijah's expression does that thing where it just seems to get stuck. It's like he doesn't know how to show what he's feeling, so everything on his face just stops wherever it's at.

"I don't know lots of things," Elijah says at last.

Khemu sticks out his tongue, not quite sure if he's disappointed or relieved. "Okay," he says, sitting up. After a second, Elijah copies him. "So we'll figure out who Desmond is. Do you want me to ask my dad?" He knows his dad doesn't like Elijah—every day now, sometimes more than once a day, Khemu's dad pulls him aside to ask him to go do something instead of playing with Elijah, or he'll give him another lecture. It makes Khemu feel uncomfortable because he's never really believed his dad was  _wrong_ about something before.

"Could you?" Elijah asks, after a very long pause.

"Yea," Khemu says. "Of course."

"Don't tell him you're asking for me. He won't tell you anything if he thinks it's for me."

"I know," Khemu says. He glances up at Elijah, at his weird, confused, scared friend. "I just wish he liked you like I do."

-/-

"Dad," Khemu says, when his dad comes up to bed later that night. By now, Elijah has already retreated to the far away corner where he's allowed to sleep at night.

"Khemu." His dad wraps a strong arm around him, and whispers into his ear. It's late and dark and quiet, and with his dad, Khemu feels like it's all perfectly safe. "Are you still awake?"

"Yea. I have a question."

"It's late," his dad says.

"Please?" Khemu turns over on the blankets so he can look up at his dad's face when he talks to him. "It's just a little question."

"Alright." He's trying to sound stern, but he's smiling. "What is it?"

"Who's Desmond?"

"A friend of mine," his dad says. "He's in an animus, like all those people downstairs—only he couldn't be here while he does it."

Khemu nods, although he feels more confused than ever. What does any of that have to do with Elijah? "Is he a Sage too?" he asks.

"Why would you ask that?"

Khemu shifts a little on the blankets, trying to figure out how much he can say. Finally, he lies. Just a  _little_ , but it's the first time he's ever lied to his dad, and it makes him feel terrible. "I heard someone talking about him and Elijah," he says. "But I couldn't understand the rest of the words."

His dad is quiet for such a long time that Khemu almost wonders if he's fallen asleep. Then he says, "Desmond's not a Sage."

"Oh. Then—"

"He's Elijah's father."

Khemu's eyes go wide in the darkness, then he sits bolt up on the blankets. "Dad!" he hisses through the darkness. "Dad, you have to tell him! He doesn't even  _know_."

"Khemu—"

"Dad!"

"It's not that simple," his dad says, sitting up as well and reaching a hand out to grasp Khemu's shoulder. "As far as I know, they've never met, they don't know about each other, and it might just be simpler if that doesn't change."

"But they're family," Khemu insists. "What if it was us, and we never met? Wouldn't you want someone to tell us?"

"It's different," his dad says.

"Why?"

"Because he's a Sage," his dad says, and Khemu shakes his head. "You always say that like it's a bad thing," he says. "But it's  _not_. There's nothing wrong with him, he's just different!" He started to get up. "And I'm going to tell him."

"Khemu."

He stops dead in his tracks—he's never heard his dad sound so serious.

"Don't you tell him," he says quietly. "It's not your place to make that decision."

Khemu bites his lip, torn between listening to his dad and running to tell his friend the truth.

" _Khemu_."

He takes a deep breath and lies back down. "Fine," he whispers.

"Good boy," his dad says, and gives Khemu a kiss on the side of the head before settling back down himself.

Khemu doesn't sleep a wink all night. Instead, he stays up and thinks, weighing both choices, trying to figure out what the right thing to do is. In the morning, he still hasn't made up his mind. When his dad goes downstairs, Khemu's still thinking. When he goes to find Elijah, he's still trying to figure it out, but then as soon as he sees his friend, without even thinking he just blurts out, "Desmond's your dad."

The look of utter surprise on Elijah's face is more expressive than Khem has ever seen him. He looks shattered, and oddly broken, and when he leans against the wall and slides down it to the floor, Khemu sits down next to him and hugs him tight.

"I didn't know," Elijah says, voice barely audible.

Khemu tries to smile, wishing he could say something to make it all right. But all he can think of is, "I guess you were right. You  _don't_ know everything."

Elijah shakes his head, and Khemu makes up his mind then and there not to leave him, not ever, because whatever everyone else thinks, Elijah needs him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the world would be a better place if we all had a friend like Khemu.


	4. Chapter 4

When Elijah finds out that this man he's never heard of is his father, his first thought is that he should have known this already. Either he should have just known it instinctively, because he's a  _Sage_ and he knows all kinds of things he shouldn't, but he never knew this, or his mother should have told him.

She never told him  _anything_ about his father.

Khemu makes things more bearable. At first he just sits there with Elijah, helping him through the first shock. And then when Elijah starts to pull himself together, Khemu starts talking about nothing much in particular, like he just wants to fill up the silence. But eventually, even he runs out of things to say, and silence settles across the two of them. Elijah's just wondering if he should say something too, if he should thank Khemu for sticking with him, when he hears footsteps heading up the stairs.

He and Khemu glance at each other, and then shift away without saying a word. They've gotten in trouble enough times just for hanging out together. Elijah presses his hands to his face, making sure everything's dry before anyone else can see.

"There you are."

Well, at least it's not Khemu's dad. But it's Berg, who still scares Elijah a little because he  _knows_  some of the horrible things Berg has done in his past, but so far Berg hasn't seemed to especially dislike Elijah the way Bayek and a few of the others do.

"We weren't doing anything wrong," Khemu says at once.

"I sincerely hope not," Berg says. "Khemu, I need to talk to you."

Khemu doesn't say anything, so Elijah glances over at him and sees Khemu looking uncertainly between him and Berg. He doesn't want to cause more problems, so he stands up and starts backing away. "I'll go," he says. "You two can talk."

"No," Khemu says. "Elijah, you can stay…"

Elijah stands ramrod stiff, watching Berg to see what he's going to say. He's not entirely surprised when he sees Berg shake his head and give him a pointed look. "This isn't something you need to be involved in."

There's a difference, Elijah has noticed, in the way he acts around Khemu, and the way he acts around everyone else he's ever met. He doesn't know why it is, exactly, that Khemu makes him feel comfortable enough to be himself, especially when  _himself_ is someone Elijah doesn't really know very well. But with Berg here, Elijah doesn't feel like he can be Elijah anymore. He feels himself going still, a sort of mask slipping over his face, so Berg won't be able to see what he's thinking, and Elijah won't have to feel. He crosses his arms and plants his feet and says, "I'll stay."

At his side, Khemu gives him a slightly confused look, but then throws his arm around his shoulders. Elijah doesn't react, focusing instead on the cold feeling billowing inside him. He  _knows_  that Berg is a dangerous man. He can almost see the blood on his hands when he looks at him, and deep down, that scares Elijah. He doesn't want to be  _himself_ around Berg, when Berg is the kind of person that could hurt him.

"Fine," Berg says, clearly irritated. Khemu gives him a big, triumphant smile, but Elijah keeps his expression flat and level. "Stay if you want, but I'm not talking to you." He makes a point of physically turning to face Khemu, as if there was any doubt about which of them he's talking to. "My daughter is going to be joining us here."

Khemu gives a little gasp of excitement, and unwinds himself from where he's hanging onto Elijah. "Really?" he says eagerly. "She's our age, right? Is she going to be here just for a little while, or is she staying like me and Elijah?"

"I think she'll be here for a while," Berg says. "It's not safe for her to go home right now, so this seems like the safest choice. And Khemu, I want you to do me a favor."

"Sure," Khemu says. "What is it?"

"Help me keep an eye on her," Berg says. "I'm going to try to be there for her the way your father's there for you, but I can't be there all the time. And I want to make sure she has a friend here."

Khemu agrees enthusiastically, and something breaks a little inside Elijah.

It takes him a minute to realize he's jealous. Khemu is  _his_ friend. Khemu's the only one he feels safe breaking down in front of, and he's the only one Elijah can be  _Elijah_ with. He's only just started figuring himself out, and he doesn't know what he's going to do about his dad yet, and now Khemu's going to go and get a new friend? That's not  _fair_.

Elijah breaks away from the two of them and Khemu doesn't even notice. He walks downstairs, and nobody stops him—opens the door and walks outside, his hands loose at his sides, barely seeing the road in front of him.

He stops at the end of the sidewalk and goes still. The world passes around him, and Elijah can't figure out what he's supposed to do next. He wants to stay, because Khemu's the first friend he's ever had, but he wants to leave because Khemu's going to have a new friend now, and he's going to forget all about Elijah. He wants to stay, because someday his dad's going to come here, but he wants to leave because his dad is going to hate him.

"Hey! Elijah!"

He doesn't move an inch until Khemu runs up to him and actually tackles him. Then Elijah blinks, and gasps, and comes back to himself. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"I came to get you," Khemu says, tugging at Elijah's hand. "Come on. We still have to figure out what's happening with your dad, right?"

"I thought you wanted to be friends with… with her now."

"Elina?" Khemu asks. "Yea, when she gets here. But I'm not going to stop being friends with you."

"You're not?"

"Course not."

Elijah feels much lighter. Maybe someday he'll get past this constant need to hear that he still has a friend, but today is not that day, and Khemu doesn't seem to mind.

They're almost back inside when Khemu suddenly stops and turns back to Elijah—there's a calculating expression on his face that makes Elijah cock his head to one side, curious. "What?" he asks.

"No one's noticed we're gone yet," Khemu says. "No one's coming to get us. And Dad went to get Elina."

"Yea. And…?"

"Let's go have an adventure," Khemu says, face lighting up. "I want to see something new."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like so far this whole fic has just been Elijah going 'please keep being my friend' and Khemu going 'well yea :)' So next chapter... they're going to go and find trouble. :)  Just to shake things up.


	5. Chapter 5

Khemu can't help himself from darting away from Elijah. The only things he's seen of this world are the hospital where they'd stitched him back together, and the warehouse. He's not sorry to finally be outside, seeing more of it.

Elijah doesn't know the area, as he keeps reminding Khemu. They wander for a little while through mostly empty streets full of other big, boxy storage buildings, and then down a busy road, where Khemu points out every car that rushes past them and invents a story about where they're going or where they came from.

Finally, the busy road gives way to a quieter couple of blocks, with little shops lining the streets and apartments overhead. It looks so different from Siwa that Khemu just  _has_ to run from place to place, taking in as much of it as he possibly can.

Elijah lags behind, arms crossed, almost stalking behind Khemu. It's not long before Khemu can't help but notice, and he slows down at last. "What's wrong with you?" he asks. "Or is this all just normal for you?"

"No," Elijah says. He keeps his voice low, so Khemu can barely even hear him. "There's just nothing very interesting here, that's all."

"It's  _all_ interesting!"

"Shh!"

Khemu cocks his head, and reluctantly lowers his voice. "What's wrong?" he asks. "Is someone following us or something?"

"No," Elijah says. "But people are staring."

He says that like it's a bad thing. "So?" he says. "Who cares if they stare?"

"You know your dad and everyone's in hiding," Elijah says. "Right? You want to be the one that gets them caught?"

"I mean… no, but…" He droops a little. He hadn't even been thinking about it. "Come on, Elijah. I don't want to go back yet. I'm tired of being stuck inside. Aren't you?"

Elijah hesitates. "Yes," he admits.

"So come  _on_." Khemu grabs Elijah's hand and tugs. "Please? I bet you know something fun we can do. You know everything."

Elijah stands back and thinks about it. Khemu can see him still turning things over in his head when someone steps up behind him, and puts a hand on his shoulder. He visibly stiffens, and his face seems to lock up like it does when he's talking to anyone other than Khemu.

He has a feeling this isn't going to go well.

-/-

Elijah turns around to see a middle aged man frowning at him.

"Let go of me," Elijah says coldly.

"What are the two of you doing out here on a school day?" the man  _(his name is Peter Nevins, he's a police officer but he's off duty right now)_  asks.

"We—" He gropes for a good excuse, but can only think of a bad one. "Got out of school early."

"The elementary school has early release days on Thursdays," Nevins says.  _(and he should know, because he has a son at that school too, a second grader in Ms. Drainer's class)_  "Not Mondays."

"Elijah," Khemu hisses. "What's going on?"

Elijah sidles sideways and steps on his foot. He doesn't think Nevins will recognize ancient Egyptian, he'll just hear a language he doesn't understand, and dismiss him—but he doesn't want to take chances. He doesn't want Khemu to get hurt. "It… something happened," he says.

"Uh huh. Sure. What was that?"  _(his son's name is Lee)_

Elijah is suddenly grateful that Khemu's English is coming along so slowly. He doesn't think his friend would be okay with this. He looks up at Nevins, and doesn't even blink. "One of our classmates got really sick," he says. "They let us go early when the ambulance came for Lee."

Nevins' face goes white in a flash. He looks flat out terrified as he runs off.

"What'd you tell him?" Khemu asks.

"Doesn't matter," Elijah says. "He's gone now, right?" After seeing that, he  _really_ doesn't think Khemu would be okay with what he said. "Come on, if you want to do something fun, we can try—"

"Elijah," Khemu says, and he sounds… disappointed? It's been a long time since Elijah heard that tone from anyone—even his mom had given up on being disappointed with him after a while. She'd just lowered her expectations. "What did you say that scared him so much?"

"I… Khemu…"

"Elijah."

"I told him his son was in the hospital."

Khemu looks horrified. "Like that place I was in? With all the people that were really badly hurt?"

"Yes."

"Was it true?"

Elijah shakes his head.

"Then why would you make him think his son was hurt when he isn't?"

"So he would go away!" Elijah says. "He was a police officer, if he thought we were ditching school or something, he could have done something, or tried to call our parents or something."

He can tell by the look on Khemu's face that he just doesn't understand. Because Khemu has been lucky, probably, Khemu has never been strange the way Elijah is, has never accidentally blurted something out that he shouldn't have, has never found himself in danger of being hurt because someone much bigger and older and stronger is angry about what he  _just knows_.

"Sometimes I just have to make someone go away," Elijah explains. Tries to explain. He knows (not supernaturally, just… from experience) that Khemu won't understand. No one ever understands. "He would have gotten us into trouble, and I… I  _knew_ that the quickest way to get rid of him was to scare him, and the way to scare him was to make him think his son was hurt…"

He trails off.

Khemu's expression isn't one of confusion, like Elijah had expected. It's flat out disappointment.

"I didn't think you'd do something like that," Khemu says.

"I'm…"

"Let's just go home," Khemu says. "Okay?" He turns on his heel and marches back the way they'd come.

"Wait! Khemu—" His heart is pounding as he races after his friend, and grabs him by the elbow. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't think that would bother you. It's not like I actually hurt his son. Everything's fine."

"I know," Khemu says. "I'm not really  _angry_ , I guess, just… I wish you hadn't done that. It feels weird. Can you just… please not do that again?"

Elijah stands stock still for several moments, watching Khemu walk away from him. His head is down, shoulders hunched, arms crossed. He hadn't even been the one that Elijah lied to, but it's clearly bothering him anyway.

"I won't," Elijah whispers, and hopes this is a promise he can keep. "I won't do it again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be honest, I was hoping this chapter would end up being a little lighter than some of the earlier ones, and then Elijah had to go and ruin someone's day. Because of course he did.


	6. Chapter 6

Elina Berg has never had friends before.

There had been other kids of course. At school, in the neighborhood, at dance lessons. But they're just kids she  _knows_. They're not kids she's friends with. Probably that's her fault, for not being better at making friends.

Khemu's different.

For someone that barely speaks the same language as her, he's a  _very_ good person. He smiles a lot, and listens, even if he doesn't always understand, and you don't have to know what someone's saying to play tag or hide and seek.

"You like him," Elijah tells her one day, when Khemu is out back with his dad—they go out to their shrine almost every afternoon, to pray to the gods that no one else believes in anymore. He's tried to explain it to Elina, but even when Elijah translates, she doesn't understand. She knows it's important to Khemu though, so she tries to make the best of it when she's alone with Elijah. He has this way of staring at her that makes her feel like he can see right through her.

"Who do I like?" she asks, looking up from where she's coloring on the floor.

"Khemu."

She grins. "He's my first friend."

"Mine too," Elijah admits, and Elina's smile fades a tiny bit. She doesn't know how to deal with that, exactly. She likes being friends with Khemu, and he's a lot of fun to play with, but Elijah doesn't seem to want to be friends with her. She doesn't want to have to argue with this boy (who looks like he's her age but acts so much smarter) about who gets to be Khemu's friend.

They're both quiet for a few moments. Elina keeps looking sideways at Elijah, and once in a while she catches him looking back at her. Finally, he says, "I know what you're thinking."

"No you don't," Elina says, because she doesn't like the sound of that.

"You're thinking we can't both be friends with Khemu at the same time," Elijah says. His voice, for some reason, is shaking a little. "But I think we can, if we make friends too."

"Do you want to be friends?" Elina asks softly.

"I don't want Khemu to pick you over me," Elijah says. "You're  _normal_ , and if he had to pick, he'd pick you."

"No he wouldn't," Elina says. "He knew you first, and you're really smart."

Elijah looks at her, and he looks really sad. "I'm not smart," he says. "I just know things."

"Yea," Elina says. "That's what being smart  _means_."

"It's a different kind of knowing things," Elijah says, and Elina opens her mouth to say something, but... she can't think of anything. She stares at Elijah instead, waiting for him to make the first move. At first, it doesn't look like he will, and then all at once he  _does_.

"Sorry," Elijah says, and then on what seems like an impulse, he leans forward and hugs her. 

Elina doesn't hug him back, but she doesn't tell him to back off either. She just says, "Elijah?"

"I... don't know why I did that," he says, still not moving. "I don't really hug people? I mean, Khemu hugs me sometimes when I'm really upset. And my mom hugged me once, when I was a baby and we didn't know anything was wrong with me yet, but..."

"Nobody hugs you?" Elina asks. "Really?" She feels sad for him,  _really_ sad. She wonders indignantly why nobody likes him, forgetting for a second that she'd been thinking pretty much the same thing a few minutes ago.

Elijah shakes his head, so Elina finally steps closer and hugs him back. They're still hanging on when Khemu comes running back in from his time with his dad, and skids to a stop nearby.

He asks Elijah a question in Egyptian, and Elijah says something that must be an explanation because Khemu jumps to join the hug right away. 

"I told him we're going to try being friends from now on," Elijah tells Elina. "And he says it looks like it's working. So what do… what do you think? Are we friends?"

"I think you're really weird," Elina tells him bluntly.

Elijah nods like this doesn't surprise him at all.

"But Khemu's two thousand years old and that's pretty weird too," Elina says with a shrug. "So I guess we're just going to have to be a group of three weird friends."

-/-

Making friends works better than Elijah had expected. Over the next few days they're inseparable, all three of them, running around the hideout and causing trouble for all the adults downstairs. But after three days of this, just as Elijah is heading up to bed, one of the adults stops him on his way up with his friends.

"Come here," the man says. "I want to talk to you."

Elijah goes stiff as a board out of sheer instinct—adults wanting to talk to him never works out well. "I was going to bed," he says. He's trying to remember the man's name, but he doesn't think anyone ever told him what it was. He just knows this is the person that came back from 2017 with Elina.

"It won't take long," the man says. "Come here, we can talk in private."

He beckons Elijah to follow him out of the safehouse, into the little patch of concrete that Elijah assumes must have been put there for employees to go on lunch break back when this was an actual warehouse and not a secret hideout. There are still a couple of picnic tables taking up space there, and the man waits until Elijah is sitting down before taking a seat across from him.

"So I've just been informed that your father is Desmond Miles," the man says. "Is that right?"

"That's what they tell me," Elijah says. "Why?"

"Because your father is my son," the man says, and Elijah feels his eyes go wide. "And it felt… inappropriate not to come by and introduce myself now that I know."

Elijah takes a minute to process that. A full minute. Finally, he looks up and says, "I've never had a grandfather before." His maternal grandfather had died a year and a half before he was born.

"I've never had a grandson."

"Okay," Elijah says. "Well… thank you for telling me. I think." He gets up to go, but before he can extricate himself from the picnic table bench, his grandfather stops him.

"Wait," he says. "I have to ask. I've been assuming until now that you were here because one of your parents is here. The same way your friends are here because of Bayek and that Templar."

Elijah isn't sure whether to correct him (Berg has a name, he's not just  _that Templar_ ) or to just let it go and focus on the still unfamiliar thrill of hearing Khemu and Elina described as  _his friends_. In the end, he decides not to say anything about it. Berg's always saying mean things about him anyway. Instead, he says, "I'm not here with anyone. I just knew I had to come."

His grandfather raises his eyebrows. Elijah doesn't explain. "Alright," the man says. "But the point I was trying to make is that if your parents aren't here, who's been taking care of you? Getting you to bed on time, making sure you're fed? All those things."

"Nobody takes care of me," Elijah says. "Even before I came here, I worked out an understanding with Mom. I don't need to be looked after. I know how to do things for myself."

This time, it's his grandfather that goes quiet for almost a full minute before saying, "Unacceptable."

"What?"

"You are a child," his grandfather says, which is something Elijah isn't used to hearing. He knows he doesn't act like most kids. People tend to assume he isn't one. "From what I've seen, you  _do_ know how to do things for yourself. But you… you are going to have someone take care of you, Elijah."

"You?" Elijah asks. His grandfather nods. "Why?"

But he  _knows_ , even as he asks the question. He knows that his grandfather had watched his son die, and had spent five years after that thinking about everything in his son's life he could have done differently. Elijah is a second chance for him to do things right.

"You're family," his grandfather says.

"I'm not my dad," Elijah says. "And you can't… you can't undo the things you did to my dad by being nice to me."

He watches his grandfather's eyebrows shoot upward so quickly it's almost funny. "How did you know—"

"Sometimes I just  _know_  things," Elijah says. "And most people hate that." Not Khemu though. And not Elina, either. "If you can stand that, then I think… we can try?"

He really thinks his grandfather is going to say no for a minute. Then he nods curtly, and says, "We're family." He reaches out, resting his hand on the picnic table, palm up. Elijah stares, then slowly reaches over to put his own hand on top. His is small and smooth compared to his grandfather's, which is rough and scarred from a lifetime as an Assassin. Elijah watches, half dazed, as his grandfather folds his fingers around his, and squeezes. "If you know things you shouldn't about how I raised your father, then you know I still have a lot to figure out."

Elijah nods.

"But I'm willing to try and figure it out."

Elijah nods. "I'll help," he says. Then he squeezes his eyes shut as something unfamiliar and wet pricks at the corners of his eyes. Tears. They're tears, and he's crying, because a week ago he only had one friend in the world, and now he has two friends  _and_ a grandfather.

They end up staying there a  _lot_  longer, talking, and when Elijah finally starts to nod off, his grandfather carries him to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This probably should have been two chapters, but I was just finishing up the part with Elina and Khemu when I realized that there was no reason for William not to introduce himself to Elijah. So I guess take this as the special, double length 'Elijah gets to be happy' chapter. :)
> 
> Also, I'm looking for opinions on if this side fic should continue. I like writing it, but I'm worried it might be confusing to have this stuff going on separate from the main fic. Please let me know!


	7. Chapter 7

"School?" Elina asks, voice quiet in the ringing silence of the room.

She's sitting next to Khemu, with Elijah on the other side of him, facing her dad, Khemu's dad, and Elijah's grandpa, across a table.

"How is that supposed to work?" Elijah asks. "I thought we were supposed to be hiding here, right? But if the three of us show up at school together, people are going to see how weird we are and realize something's going on."

"It's a small risk," his grandfather says, and Elina half rolls her eyes as he and Elijah stare at each other in stubborn, wordless silence. They've started doing that sometimes, because they're both really stubborn and don't like to back down. Elina asked him once if it bothers him that his grandfather is always mad at him, but Elijah had said that he  _isn't_ always mad. He said that's just how they understand each other, which doesn't make sense to Elina, but seems to just be how Elijah understands the world.

The rest of them waste an awkward couple of seconds waiting for one of them to blink and back down, but then Elina's dad clears his throat and just continues the conversation without them.

"He's right," he says. "It  _is_  only a small risk. No one is looking for the three of you, and you  _need_ an education."

"But Pappa…"

"Khemu doesn't even speak English," her dad says, and gestures to where Khemu's whining in Egyptian next to her. "If you ask me,  _that's_ more suspicious than anything else. He needs an education, and he needs you and— _Elijah_ with him, to cover for what he doesn't know." He spits out the name with so much venom that Elijah stops staring at his grandpa and squirms. Khemu scoots over and leans against Elijah.

Once, Elina would have been jealous of that, but not anymore. Sometimes it's still frustratingly hard to be friends with Elijah, sometimes it's like he's purposefully cutting himself off from everyone else, and sometimes Elina will even wonder why she's even friends with him in the first place. Then she'll see something like this, someone  _else_ hurting him, and she remembers all over again that he shouldn't have to be alone. He doesn't fight Khemu when he gets close, the way he fights Elina or anyone else.

"Elina."

She stops staring at Elijah and Khemu and looks back up at her dad. "Yea?"

"I need you to go to school," he says. "It won't be so different from the school you went to back home. I need you to do that for me."

And Elina has always been raised to believe that Duty and Honor are important, so when her dad asks her to do something, there's no way she's ever really going to say no. She nods at him.

"I can't go," Elijah says, in a very tiny voice. He's quiet, but not (as far as Elina can tell) ashamed or afraid. Or maybe he is. It's hard to be sure.

"Oh," Khemu says, a few seconds later. His dad, who has that translator thing that Khemu's ears are still too small for, has been interpreting for Khemu, but it means he ends up a few seconds behind everyone else in the conversation most of the time. He whispers a question to Elijah, who nods.

Khemu groans.

"I… went into town a few days ago," Khemu says at last. "And I had an argument with a police officer there. I said something to him that—well, he's not going to forget me any time soon."

"What did you do?" Elina asks, because she hasn't heard this story yet.

Elijah doesn't answer, but the way he looks down at his hands and just  _stares_ means that he'd said something bad.

"Did you do something that's going to put us in danger?" Elijah's grandpa asks, leaning across the table, hands clasped.

Elijah shakes his head. "No," he says. "It's just going to get me in trouble."

"Then you'll go to school," his grandpa says. "And you will put up with the consequences, and you will not do it again."

Khemu is having a whole side conversation with  _his_ dad, and Elina (as usual) has no idea what the two of them are saying to each other, but the upshot of it is that as Elijah is quietly nodding his head that yes, he'll go to school if that's what he has to do, Khemu is making faces but nodding too. Elina's not going to be the only one that doesn't go, so she inches closer to Khemu as her dad nods in approval.

And just like that, they're going to school.

-/-

Khemu still doesn't have an entirely clear idea of school is going to be like. His dad can only give him the vaguest explanation, because he's never done this either. Layla has a  _lot_ of stories about her time at school, but most of those seem to end with Layla getting in trouble for  _something_. Elijah clearly doesn't like school because he doesn't talk answer any of Khemu's questions when he asks. And no one else knows enough Egyptian to help him figure out what to expect.

So Khemu mostly worries quiet about this School Thing that both of his friends seem so upset about, until the night before their first day finally comes. Khemu is supposed to have extra help until he gets a handle on English ( _if_ he gets a handle on English, he hasn't so far, and it's been a whole month), but what if it's not enough, or someone notices he's speaking a dead language, or…

He's sitting next to the upstairs window with his knees drawn up to his chest, worrying and thinking that he's never going to get to sleep tonight, when Elijah comes over lugging a big paper bag. He plops down next to Khemu and starts pulling things out. Notebooks and pencils and piles of colored folders.

"Me and Grandpa went out to get supplies" he says, with the air of slightly surprised pride he usually has when mentioning his grandpa, like he still can't get over the fact that he has family that exists, and cares about him. Khemu has no idea how he's going to react when he finally gets to meet his actual dad. "You get some too."

So he and Khemu silently split the new supplies between them, and then when they're done, Elijah asks, "So are you ready for school?"

Khemu shifts nervously, but doesn't ask Khemu not to  _just know_ things about him. Khemu can't help it. "I'm scared," he says.

Elijah doesn't answer for a second. He's busy stacking up his folders, perfectly lining the corners up. But at last he looks at Khemu, and nods. "Me too," he says. "I always got bullied in school, you know? But at least now I have you and I have Elina and I never had friends before. So I don't care what anyone else says about me, and neither should you."

"But I won't  _know_ what anyone says," Khemu tells him, staring at the stack of supplies. "It's not going to be like it is here, 'cuz no one's going to know what I'm saying, and I'm just going to be weird because I grew up in the past, and—"

"Why did you agree to go, then?" Elijah asks. "If you hate it so much?"

"Because  _you're_  going," Khemu says. "You and Elina."

Elijah looks surprised for a second, then grins, a genuine expression that makes him seem more human than normal. "Yea we are," he says. "And we're going to help you, and soon you'll know exactly what's going on and you're going to fit in just fine."

Khemu's not sure that he believes it, but Elijah's reassurance makes him feel a little bit better anyway.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure my favorite part of this chapter is the idea that William and Elijah bond by staring at each other until one of them stops being stubborn and gives in on whatever they're arguing about :p Also, yes, I finally get them into school! I've been aiming for this since the first chapter, but there was always other stuff to talk about, so I'm very happy this is finally here!
> 
> Also, semi-important announcement: I am taking a brief break from updating Bayek of Nowhere, because I'm at a point where this chapter where I basically sit down to write, get a few hundred words in, then scrap it all and start over to take it in a different direction. So far, I've been ok with just a very vague outline of where this is going, but I'm at the point now where I really need to sit down and figure out the plot.
> 
> I already have a few general ideas, so I don't think this will take too long (hopefully). In the meantime, I'll keep updating this fic, and hopefully I'll be back to writing both fics within a week. :) Sorry to anyone that's waiting for updates, but I think it's going to be better if I take the time to sit down and really get this right instead of rushing something out just to get it out.


	8. Chapter 8

Elijah and Elina are put in the same class, but poor Khemu is put in a different one. Elina feels bad, watching him being led away, clearly not  _entirely_ sure what's going on, but there's nothing she can do to help anyway. They're all in the main office, getting class assignments and handbooks and boring school things. Elina doesn't know what lies their parents told the school to get them into school here, so she's mostly been staying quiet and focusing on pouting, instead of listening.

Khemu being taken away is the first thing all morning that's made Elina actually sit up and pay attention.

"Wait," she says. "What—we're not all going to be in the same class?"

"Neither of the third grade classes have enough space for three new students," the woman that's been lecturing them says. "So you'll have to be split up."

"But—"

Khemu is gone by this point, disappeared down the hall somewhere, to his new classroom probably, and even when Elina turns around in the purple plastic chair she's sitting in, she can't see where he's gone. She slumps a little in her chair.

"Come with me," the woman says, and neither Elina nor Elijah argues as she leads them down the hall. She takes them the same way that Khemu went, but he must have already been inside his classroom because Elina doesn't see him.

She doesn't argue as their guide leads them down the hall, around a corner, and into a classroom decorated with construction paper flowers with kids' names written on them. She glances at Elijah but he doesn't look back at her, and then their new teacher beckons them to the front of the classroom so she can introduce them.

Elina mostly feels embarrassed, but she can almost  _hear_ Elijah gritting his teeth next to her.

When their teacher asks them to say something about themselves as an introduction, they look at each other and kind of wordlessly argue over which of them has to go first. Elijah, of course, has been doing pretty much nothing else with his grandpa for days, so he wins. Elina looks back out at the classroom, at the sea of faces staring at them. Most of the kids look like they can't make up their minds whether to be bored or curious.

"My name's Elina," she says, and for the first time, she's very conscious of the fact that English isn't her first language—her dad has always insisted she practice, and she's a lot more fluent than Khemu is, but until she came here she never had to use it  _all the time_. And kids can be mean… She forces herself to keep going. "I'm nine years old next month, and… I hope it's going to be a good year."

She feels like she's just said the dumbest thing in the world.

But at least it's Elijah's turn to answer now, and Elina sort of tries to melt into the background as all eyes turn to him.

Elijah thinks about it for a minute. Elina is close enough to him to see him raise his eyes to the ceiling, as if contemplating an answer. She's also close enough to recognize the little frowny twitch at the corner of his mouth that means he's going to say something stupid.

"My name's Elijah," he says, still contemplating the ceiling. "And I don't want to be here."

Elina rolls her eyes so hard her head hurts, and the teacher quickly shoos them into seats on opposite ends of the room. It's probably better that way. On the one hand, Elijah is the only person she knows here, and he  _is_ a friend, but on the other hand  _why does he have to be so sarcastic all the time._

Those unhappy thoughts keep Elina occupied for most of the morning, which seems only fair because she and Elijah seem to be keeping the rest of the class distracted while they ogle at the two of them. Elina doesn't like being the center of attention, she just really doesn't like it.

When it's finally time for lunch, their teacher lines them all up by the door, then leads them down to the lunchroom. They're supposed to sit at their class's assigned tables when they're down there, but Elina decides to take advantage of the fact that she's new to pretend she can't figure out the rules. Instead of sitting with her new classmates, who are still strangers, she scans the crowded and noisy lunchroom until she finds Khemu. Then she marches straight over to him and sits down.

Unsurprisingly, Elijah follows her, and the three of them sit in the little empty space that Khemu's classmates have cleared out around him. He's looking less energetic than Elina is used to seeing him, picking at his food until the two of them come over to join him, sitting down on either side of the table so that they're between Khemu and the rest of his class.

"This is dumb," Elijah mutters. "We should have been in the same class. At least then you'd have someone to  _translate_." He glances at Elina, then looks back at Khemu. Mutters something unhappy in Egyptian, maybe the translation of what he'd just said in English, or maybe just another complaint. Either way, it doesn't seem to cheer Khemu up at all.

"Was your morning really bad?" Elina asks Khemu. She scoots down on her chair so she can reach across and kick Elijah under the table. "Ask him if it was really bad."

Elijah gives her a disbelieving look. "I already know it was bad," he says.

"Because of your psychic thing?"

" _No_ ," Elijah says. "I know it, and you know it. Look at him, Elina."

That's hard to argue with, because Elina has never seen Khemu look like this. Totally cut off and alone. At least at home, he has his dad and Elijah and Layla to talk to, and even the people that can't talk to him understand  _why_.

She zones out for a couple minutes, thinking. When she snaps back, Elijah and Khemu are talking again, and he's actually looking a little cheered up. "I'll be right back," she mutters, wiggling out of her seat and hurrying away. She has an idea for something she  _should_ do, but she doesn't really  _want_ to. So she should go. She should do it before she chickens out and changes her mind.

"Where are you going?" Elijah calls after her, but when she turns around, the look on his face—it makes her wonder if he already  _knows_. Maybe yes, maybe no. Hard to tell with Elijah.

"Bathroom," she lies, and she tells the lunch mom the same thing when she asks. She's out the door and down the hall before anyone can stop her, and she heads right for the principal's office. She heads right for the lady that had given them their class assignments and says, "I need to switch classrooms."

The woman takes a second to recognize her. Then frowns. "I told you," she said. "There's not enough room in either class for three new students."

"I know," Elina said. "I'm not asking for that. I just want to switch with Khemu, because Elijah's the only one that understands him. So Khemu needs to be in his class, and I can go in the other class. Otherwise it's not fa—" She stops herself, swallowing the words. Her dad's taught her that things don't have to be  _fair_. It's not life's job to be  _fair_. But it's their job to make sure things are  _right_. To keep things in order.

"It's the only way to do it that makes sense," she finishes.

-/-

After lunch, instead of going back with Elijah, Elina goes alone into the other classroom, all alone, because Khemu needs to be with someone he can actually talk to. It's not  _great_ , being the only new kid in class. And everyone stares at her even more than they had in the first class, or maybe she's just noticing it more because Elijah's not here too, so it's all focused on her.

But she'll get used to it. And at the end of the day, when they go home, they're all together anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hard thing about writing these guys is that I really just want to skip ahead a few years ago--I feel like they would make such a great High School AU. xD But I don't want to get this too far ahead of the main fic, especially because I don't know for sure how it's going to end, if everyone's going to live, etc. etc. :)


	9. Chapter 9

"So do you like it?" Khemu's dad asks him after his first week of school.

They're out back, sitting at one of the picnic tables, the leftovers from dinner spread out across it. The two of them had started the meal on opposite sides, but by now Khemu is sitting next to his dad, leaning against his side, his dad's arm wrapped around his chest. One of Khemu's legs is stretched out along the length of the bench, and he lets the other one hang down the side, swinging idly. It's a calm, chill night, getting on to winter, but the quiet and privacy out here make up for the temperature.

"Some of it," Khemu says. "I like… I don't know. Math. That's the same as it was at home. Numbers don't change. I don't really get computers, but I  _want_ to. We have a whole hour on Thursdays when we just get to go to the computer lab and play with them."

"What about your classmates?" his dad asks.

"Hmm," Khemu says, and to avoid answering, he reaches out for another bit of dinner. They made food from home today, or as close as they could get with the ingredients they had, to celebrate Khemu getting all the way through his first week. Tomorrow, Khemu is going to get Elijah and Elina to try some, because he just  _knows_ they'll like it, but tonight is just for him and his dad.

" _Hmm_ is not an answer, Khemu," his dad says.

But Khemu's natural instinct is to try and look at things as positively as he can, and he's having trouble with that right now. He chews slowly so he can think, then tries to find a middle ground to answer. "I'm really glad Elijah's in my class," he says. "Because he translates stuff for me, and he explains stuff. But… I don't know. English is  _hard_ , Dad."

"I know," his dad says, with a small laugh. "But you are  _smart_ , Khemu. And you will learn it."

Khemu makes a face. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it. There are times when he can feel works sort of… poking through, common phrases whose meanings he'd already learned. But never enough to understand what's going on, or follow a conversation, or understand what his teacher's saying in class. "You sure?" he asks.

"You can be anything you want to be, Khemu," his dad says.

"Just not myself," Khemu points out. "Not Khemu of Siwa, from two thousand years ago."

His dad turns Khemu around, gently nudging him until they're face to face. "You will always be Khemu of Siwa," he says. "Because that is where you come from. It's your first home, and no matter how far you travel, you can never leave that behind. Not even if you want to."

"What about you?" Khemu asks. "Are you still Siwan?"

"I will always be Bayek of Siwa," his dad says, in a voice of such slow, absolute certainty that Khemu finds himself nodding along. "But I have been many other things as well. I have been a medjay, and I have been the  _last_ medjay. I have been a Hidden One, and now I suppose I am an Assassin. I have been a husband and a father and all those things are a part of me."

Which Khemu doesn't doubt at all—his dad can do just about  _anything._ But Khemu's not his dad. "I can't do that," he says.

"You can do anything, Khemu. You'll… you  _will_  learn English. And faster than you think. Then you'll find yourself a place here. You already have friends, and soon you'll have more."

"But I'd have to keep secrets from them," Khemu says. "I couldn't tell them where I'm from."

"Yes," his dad agrees, and Khemu sighs. "That will always be something that you have to live with. But Khemu, even if you can't tell them the  _facts_ of where you come from, it will all come through in other ways. They'll know you."

"Like what?" Khemu asks. "What other ways?"

"Well," his dad says. "The food you eat." He gestures to the leftovers. "That's from home. And the things you value. You learned those in Siwa too."

Khemu nods, and turns around again to lean against his dad. The stars are starting to come out, and they remind him of the stories his father had told him back home. Only… "Even the constellations are different here," he says softly. "How can I stay the same when even the  _stars_ have moved?"

"Because you are  _brighter_ than all the stars in the sky," his dad tells him, giving him a tight hug. "And you can do anything you put your mind to."

Khemu's not sure he believes that, but it sounds nice, so he decides that it probably can't hurt much to believe it for just tonight. "You too, Dad," he says. "You're still here too."

-/-

The next morning, when Khemu wakes up, he finds Elijah sitting cross legged next to his head, a book in his lap.

"What're you doing here?" Khemu mumbles, pushing pointlessly at Elijah's knee. It doesn't move him at all. "Go 'way, I'm sleeping. You're weird."

"I got this from the library at school," Elijah says, without any buildup. "I saw it and I knew you needed it, so I checked it out for you." He puts the book down next to Elijah, who squints at the letters. English, as usual.

"What's it about?" Khemu asks.

"Constellations," Elijah says. "And all the stories people tell about them. Why do you need a book about constellations, Khemu?"

He yawns and sits up, rubbing his eyes. "Don't you know already?" he asks.

Elijah shrugs. "No," he says. "I just know that you need it. So why?"

Khemu flips through the book, looking more at the pictures than at the words he can't read anyway. The stars are all different from the ones he knows, but the stories… they're not  _gone_ , they're just  _different_. Like he'll have to be different, growing up here. Like his memories of home will have to be  _different_ , not  _gone_.

He looks back up at Elijah. "Will you tell me the stories?" he asks. "I can't read them."

Elijah looks at him for a long moment, then shakes his head and stands up. "No," he says. "Read them yourself."

"But I  _can't_ —"

"So learn," Elijah says. "I  _know_ you can."

Khemu looks back down at the book, tracing a pattern. This one looks a little bit like a bull, like the Apis whose constellation he'd learned at home. Just a little bit different. "Well fine," he mutters, even though there's no one around to hear. "Maybe I  _will_ learn."

"Learn fast," Elijah shouts back at him. He's already halfway down the hall. "It's due back at the library next week on Thursday."

Khemu rolls his eyes, but grins too as he tucks the book under his arm and goes downstairs to show his dad.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved the star circles in Origins. :) Possibly because they were the closest they ever got to having Khemu back in the story. xD
> 
> In unrelated news, the next chapter of Bayek of Nowhere should be up tomorrow/today, depending on your time zone. 


	10. Chapter 10

Elijah wakes up with a fever, and immediately knows that today is going to be awful. It's not anything crazy, it's not like when he just knows something that he isn't-supposed-to or couldn't-possibly know, it's just that… he feels so gross he wants to curl up in a ball and die.

"Do I have to go to school today?" he asks his grandpa when the man comes by to check why he isn't up yet.

"No," his grandpa says. "It's Sunday, Elijah." He crouches down in front of him, and puts a hand on Elijah's forehead. It's businesslike and to the point, and Elijah doesn't move mostly because he doesn't have the energy to. "You have a fever," he says.

"I  _know_ I do," Elijah mumbles. "Ow…"

He thinks he sees sympathy there, although it's always a little hard to tell with his grandpa. He just doesn't have a face that's easy to read. "You'll have to see a doctor," he says. "You might need to go on antibiotics."

"I don't want to go," Elijah protests. "I don't  _feel_ good…"

"And you'll feel worse if you don't do anything about it," his grandpa points out. "The sooner we get you to a doctor and on medicine, the sooner you'll feel better."

Elijah has had this argument more than once with his mother, and he's never lost once. He'd rarely lost fights with her, after… well.

His grandfather doesn't argue. He leans down, wraps his arms around Elijah, and hauls him to his feet. "Get dressed," he said. "I'll find a doctor that will take you this morning."

"But—"

And  _still_ his grandfather doesn't argue. He's out the door and heading downstairs before Elijah can get a full sentence out. He rubs at his face, trying to get the world to stop spinning, but it doesn't, and his face is warm, and he really wants to go back to bed.

In the end, the only thing that stops him is that he really needs to find some tissues. He feels like everything in his head is dripping out through his nose, because there's no way he could ever make that much snot. And then when he finds the tissues, he has to go to the bathroom so he does that, and then he decides that he might as well get dressed, and then his grandpa is back to drag him downstairs so they can go to the doctor.

That part's kind of a daze. He has vague memories of telling the doctor how he feels, and his grandpa adding a lot of fake names and stuff. Then the doctor writes a prescription for Elijah, and soon enough they're at the pharmacy, waiting for it to be ready. Elijah is tired, and already nodding off again, leaning against his grandpa's shoulder because he's too out of it to think that it might be a bad idea.

"Why are you doing all this?" he asks.

"Taking you to the doctor and getting you medicine?" his grandpa asks. "Because you have a fever of one hundred and two."

"It would go down eventually."

"But that doesn't—" He lets out an exasperated sigh. "Why are  _you_ doing this, Elijah?"

"Doin' what?"

" _Doing_. Why are you fighting me about doctors and medicine? These things aren't optional when you're sick."

"Because. I don't know." He sniffs, and wipes at his nose with the back of his hand. His grandpa hands him a tissue and Elijah blows his nose, burrowing deeper into his shoulder. "I don't like doctors."

"Do you like being sick?"

"No—"

"Then you must know that you have to come to the doctor," his grandpa says. "Like it or not, you're smart enough to know that this is how you get better."

"But Grandpa…" He looks up at him, eyes squinty because he's  _tired_. "They always want to test me. And I'm all messed up inside, I don't want them to find out…" His mom had always made him do all the tests the doctors asked for, even the psych ones that he always fails because he's not normal  _at all_. Then he got old enough to fight her on going to the doctor, because it was the only way to keep himself safe.

"The Templars found out about you because an Abstergo clinic took a sample of your DNA," his grandpa says.

"See?" Elijah says.

"But that's because your mother had no idea how special you are," his grandpa says. "And she had no idea how to protect you. How many tests did the doctor do on you today?"

Elijah shakes his head. "Blood pressure, and weight, and temperature," he says. "But… those don't really count as tests. And he wanted to do a strep test, but—"

"But that would have meant he took a sample," his grandpa says. "And anyway, even he said strep was unlikely."

"So…" So for the first time, Elijah isn't on his own. Maybe to some people, it would be a bad thing to have someone hovering around, stopping doctors from checking everything that might possibly be wrong with them. Elijah is just so, so  _happy_ that someone else is going to be looking out for him from now on. He lapses into silence, and then kind of dozes off. Eventually they must have left to go home, because the next time Elijah is fully conscious, they're back home.

An indeterminable amount of time later, his grandpa comes back for him, carrying the medicine that Elijah is supposed to take. He sits up dutifully, and manages to swallow the pill. Then he says, "Grandpa?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you really not care that I'm broken?" He wishes he knew that already, but he doesn't. Out of all the things he  _does_ know that he shouldn't… he can never tell if people  _like_ him.

Or maybe he just can't ever make himself believe that they do.

"I care that your fever's high enough for you to even  _ask_ that question," his grandpa says. "Because any other day, I know you'd realize how absurd it sounds."

"Please," Elijah says.

His grandpa crouches down in front of him, and for a moment he seems to search his face for the right answer. Then at last, he says. "I love you. And that's the only answer I'm going to give you to that question, because nothing else matters."

"No wait," Elijah says quickly. "Wait… do you think… when my dad comes here… if he wants to see me…."

"If," his grandpa scoffs. " _If_. Elijah, once Desmond gets here, he is never going to let you go."

And with that reassuring thought, Elijah slips back into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So last chapter was Khemu and Bayek, now we have Elijah and William, I guess next chapter will have to be Elina and Berg?


	11. Chapter 11

Every morning, Elina gets up early, she gets dressed, and she goes downstairs to where her dad is (always) already up, usually frowning at a computer as he types away. Elina will sit down with him and take her blue folder out of her backpack, the one that her teacher had written HOMEWORK on with big, blocky letters.

She always does her homework right after school, with Khemu and Elijah. Their teacher gives them a lot more math homework, but Elina's likes to give art projects that take  _forever_ , so even if they're not all working on the same thing, it takes them about the same amount of time to get through it all, and it's more fun doing homework when all three of them are together.

Still. Every single morning before school, Elina gets up early, and she looks at it a second time, to make sure it's right, and make her dad happy.

"Did you do it correctly?" her dad asks her, without looking up from what he's typing. He seems tired this morning—he always seems tired when it's just the two of them. All the rest of the time, he's the one that has to keep everyone in line here, but in the mornings he's  _just_ her dad.

"I'm still checking," Elina says.

"Make sure you check carefully," her dad says. "It's very important to be able to do things correctly."

"I know," Elina says. It's very important to him that she does homework correctly, just like it's very important to him that she does well at everything else she does. While other kids have parents that tell them to try their best and have fun, Elina's dad has always reminded her of the importance of doing things  _right_.

She's still fighting her fractions when her dad says, "Elina?"

"I think it's right so far," she says, then stops when she realizes he's actually turned around to look at her. She doesn't usually get his full attention for no reason. "Dad?"

"Are you—how have you liked being here?"

"I like it better than being in the cave," Elina says, then regrets it because he doesn't look happy to be reminded about that. They never talk about it, even if sometimes Elina wants to talk about the things that happened there. "I don' like this school as much as the one I used to go to, but I have better friends here."

"Khemu," her dad says.

"And Elijah," Elina reminds him,  _again_. He never seems to want to mention Elijah, for some reason.

"And Elijah," he repeats, reluctantly. "Elina…"

She puts down her pencil, ignoring her homework for a minute as she waits for him to get to whatever he's trying to say. She can't remember ever seeing him lost for words before.

"Do you understand what we're doing here?" he asks at last.

"I guess… stopping Juno," Elina says. "But…"

"But what?" he prompts her.

"But how are you going to stop someone like  _that_?" she asks.

Her dad sighs and leans forward, clasping his hands together. "I know you told me you didn't want to talk about what Juno did to you," he says. Elina drops her gaze. He'd tried to talk to her several times when she first came back, but Elina didn't like to think about it. Anyway, William had told him and Layla everything already, so she didn't  _have_ to talk about it. He'd told her so.

"You know already," she says. "And I don't really want to—"

"I want to talk about it, though," he says, perfectly calm. "I think you've had enough time to recover."

Elina stares down at her homework. "No," she says, and even though she's pretty sure it's the first time she's ever flat out disobeyed her dad, it feels like the only choice right now.

"You won't talk about it," her dad says. "Miles won't talk about it. But  _one_ of you has to, because every day you don't is a day we go without important information. Do you understand that, Elina?"

She does understand it, but that doesn't mean—she's not going to talk about it. She wouldn't care if he wanted to ask her about when Juno took her away from her mom. She wouldn't care if he wanted to ask about when Bayek and Layla rescued them. But she can't talk about what happened when they were in the temple.

"Yes," she says, quietly. "I understand, but I just… can't."

"Can't?" Her dad asks. "Or won't?"

"It was really bad," Elina says. "That's all."

"Elina."

"Dad, I have a lot of homework, and I have to check I did it right…"

"Elina, did Juno ever tell you to do anything? Like this?" He leans forward and puts his hand on her forehead.

"Dad—"

"She did, didn't she?" He lets his hand drop, and Elina scoots quickly backward in her chair. "Elina, what did she tell you?"

"Dad!" She feels tears but doesn't know exactly why she's crying. Maybe it's because he's scaring her, or maybe it's because of something else.

" _Fuck_." He says it with so much feeling that this time Elina knows for sure that she's scared. He just doesn't hear him swear around her a whole lot. "We should have taken care of this a long time ago."

"There's nothing to take care of," Elina insists.

"Stay there," her dad says, pointing at her chair. Elina nods quickly, too scared to disobey right now. Her dad hurries away, and Elina pulls her legs up onto her chair, hugging her knees. She doesn't know what's going to happen next.

-/-

Elijah's downstairs in the kitchen, trying to figure out the best path through the crowd of adults hogging the food in the kitchen, when he suddenly  _knows_ there's somewhere else he needs to be. It's annoying, because he's trying to get breakfast, plus he's still tired, but he knows better than to ignore feelings like this.

So he closes his eyes. Sometimes it's easier to follow things like that. Less distraction. He lets his feet take him where they know he needs to go, hoping he doesn't look  _too_ weird as he skirts around people and equipment without ever seeing one of them. He just knows where they are, right up until the point where he walks into a wall. Elijah opens his eyes and makes a face as he rubs at his nose.

"—have to be able to tell us something."

"No."

" _Something_ , William!"

Elijah presses himself into a corner, listening hard. His feet have led him to a quiet spot where he can just hear his grandpa arguing with Berg, and if this is what he needs to hear, then he's going to stay quiet and listen.

"I won't talk to you about what happened with Juno." He sounds angrier than Elijah has ever heard him, and Berg doesn't sound much happier.

"Neither will Elina," Berg says. "William, can't you see she  _must_ have done something to you? I can at least understand why Elina might be too scared to talk about it. She's a little girl and she's never been through anything like this before. But you—"

"Maybe I just prefer not to talk about any of it with the Templars," Elijah's grandpa snaps.

"So you've told someone else about it?" Berg demands. " _Anyone_ else? Or did she tell you not to?"

Oh. Elijah slides down the wall and presses his hand to his mouth. So that's what it is. His grandpa and his friend were with Juno and her mind controlling apple for months, and maybe she did something to them, and… and why wouldn't she? Juno's the kind of person that likes making long term plans. She's been around for thousands of years, all her plans are long term. Of  _course_ she would have planted something in one or both of them, but they've just been acting so normal…

The two adults are still shouting at each other, but Elijah isn't listening anymore. He's too busy trying to figure out how to  _fix_ it.

"Come on," he mutters, squeezing one hand into a fist and pressing it into his forehead. "Come on, stupid brain, what am I supposed to do now?"

But even though he knows all sorts of stupid, pointless, useless things—he knows that his grandpa's socks don't match today, that Elina is crying because her dad shouted at her, that Senu is coming back from hunting, and they're out of scrambled eggs in the kitchen. But he doesn't  _know_ how to help make things better, just that… that he's going to have to figure it out.

Along with Khemu, and the dad he still hasn't met, Elina and his grandpa are two of the only four people in the world that Elijah thinks would care if anything happened to him. He's not going to lose them just because Juno's turned them into some kind of ticking time bomb. So he's just… he's going to have to figure it out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a cute father-daughter scene with Berg and Elina, to match the last two chapters that Khemu and Elijah got, but then plot interfered?
> 
> Honestly, the idea that Juno might have messed with William or Elina while they were captive is something I've been wanting to deal with for a while, but there just hasn't been anywhere good to fit it into the main fic... so I guess this is a better alternative than just not putting it anywhere?


	12. Chapter 12

"Khemu! Khemu, I need your help to do something that's going to get you in a lot of trouble."

Elijah stops in front of his friend, panting from his run all the way across the school playground. It's recess, the same day as the conversation Elijah overheard between his grandpa and Elina's dad. He's been thinking about it all day, over and over again, until he has the beginnings of a very bad, very dangerous plan. And the worst part of it is that he needs Khemu's help to make it work.

"What do you need?" Khemu asks. He sounds worried. "What's wrong?"

"Elina's wrong," Elijah says. "And my grandpa."

Khemu cocks his head to one side, studying Elijah intently for a second. Then he grasps Elijah's shoulders and pulls him away from the rest of the kids, to a quiet corner. "What's wrong?" he asks again, and this time Elijah tells him. He rushes through the explanation, tripping over his words, stuttering as he tries to force himself to make sense. When he's done, he's about to start explaining his plan, but Khemu stops him before he can.

He doesn't say anything, just steps forward and hugs Elijah. For a second, Elijah resists. This isn't the time for it, he needs to be  _doing_ something, so he can help the people he cares about. Then he crumples, because Khemu is one of those people too. If Juno's hurt his grandpa and Elina, and no one can fix them—and if his dad never comes back—then Khemu is the only person left that has ever cared about him.

Khemu lets him cry until Elijah can't cry anymore. It's never been something he's very good at—crying doesn't do much good if there's no one around to help you feel better after, and until now, there never was anyone. "Okay," Khemu says. "So what's this really bad idea of yours?"

"I need you to steal the apple from your dad," Elijah says, not quite meeting Khemu's eyes.

"You want me to steal from my  _dad_?" Khemu hisses. "Elijah!"

"It's the only thing I can think of!" Elijah says, his voice all the more defensive because he knows Khemu deserves to sound angry. "That's what Juno used to hurt them, isn't it? So what else are we supposed to use to undo it?"

"Maybe  _we're_ not supposed to do anything," Khemu says. "Maybe Dad or some of the other grownups can—"

"I don't… Khemu, I'm not going to wait around for someone else to figure out that they need to use the apple. And I'm not going to stand around and let my friends get hurt, okay? I can do this. I know I can. I just need your help to get the apple away from your dad, because he trusts you and I don't think he trusts me." This is based more on the fact that  _nobody_  ever trusts him than on anything specific Bayek has or hasn't done. "Khemu, please. I know this is hard for you, but—what about Elina? She's your friend too."

"I…" Khemu looks more uncomfortable than Elijah has ever seen him. "Are you sure this is going to work?"

"No," Elijah says, his voice barely louder than a whisper. "But I can't think of anything else to try."

They stare at each other. Then Khemu swallows and nods. "Just try not to get caught."

"I wasn't planning on it," Elijah says vehemently. That's… pretty much his whole plan at the moment right now— _don't get caught_. He has that part all planned. It's just… everything else he still has to figure out.

-/-

They wait until late, almost midnight, when everyone else is passed out fast asleep. No one really stays up late here—half of them are pushing themselves too hard in the animi, which is apparently pretty exhausting, and the other half are pushing themselves  _running_ the animi, which probably isn't better. Elijah takes a nap in the afternoon, after he sits down with Khemu and Elina to do homework, then wakes up a little past midnight when Khemu shakes him awake.

"I got it," Khemu whispers.

"Already?" Elijah feels a jolt of adrenaline shoot through him as he sits up, then pushes himself to his feet. "You should have woken me up sooner, I could have kept watch for you, or something—"

"I figured it would be easier to get it from Dad if it was just me," Khemu whispers. "At least I have a reason to be over there." He holds up the bag that his dad and Layla always keep the apple in when they're not using it. Then he hands it to Elijah. "Do you need me to do anything else? Or should I just hang out and make sure nothing goes wrong?"

"Go back to bed," Elijah says. "I don't want you to get in trouble if—"

"No way," Khemu whispers back. "I did this much already, right? I might as well do what I can to help now."

"Okay," Elijah says, although he's honestly not sure what Khemu can do to help. At least it's going to make him feel better to have his best friend next to him while he tries to do this. He puts his finger to his lips in a  _shhh!_ Motion, and Khemu nods before the two of them creep over to where Elijah's grandpa is sleeping. There's no particular reason for him to go there first, instead of Elina, it's just that his grandpa is closer.

"How does this—"

"Shh!" Elijah hisses, and Khemu goes quiet. The two of them sit down, settling in back to back, so Elijah is facing his grandpa and Khemu is facing the rest of the room. Then, heart pounding, he reaches into the bag and takes out the apple.

Okay. Okay, so… he has no idea how this works. The apple pulses faintly in his hands, and Elijah folds himself around it to keep the light from waking anyone up. He closes his eyes, and tries to figure out how this is supposed to work. It  _has_ to work, doesn't it? He's a Sage, he has so much isu DNA in him, and after all this time it has to be good for  _something_ …

Tentatively, acting on an instinct that he doesn't understand, Elijah puts the apple on his lap, reaches forward, and puts a shaking hand on his grandpa's forehead. For a second, he feels very stupid.

And then the apple hums. Elijah can't exactly  _describe_  what's going on, but he  _sees_ (with some sense other than his eyes) what Juno has done to his grandpa. He sees her commands planted in his head, set to only unlock under certain conditions, when everything looks like it's going right, if— _when_ they get close to stopping her. He sees, plain as day, that his grandpa would have turned on them, and he wouldn't have had any choice about it.

Elijah swallows. Up until this exact second, he'd sort of been hoping he was wrong, and Juno hadn't done  _anything_. Now he sees it, but he has no idea how to stop it. He's terrified of making the wrong move, somehow messing him up even more.

"Is it working?" Khemu whispers.

"No," Elijah admits, after a pause that feels longer than it should in the dark silence. "Khemu, I don't know how to do this."

Khemu doesn't say anything for a little while, but then he leans back, pressing his back against Elijah's. "I believe in you," he says. "You can do it."

"It's really bad," Elijah whispers. "I can see… all these bad things she did to him, but I don't know how to get rid of it."

"Try," Khemu says. "Just try."

Elijah leans back against Khemu too, so they're pressed right up against each other, and somehow that makes him feel a lot stronger. Khemu starts to hum something, quiet enough that it's not going to wake anyone else up, but loud enough for Elijah to hear. It's a steady, regular noise, and Elijah breathes in deeply, matching his breath to its rhythm.

His focus narrows, to just the apple, his grandpa, and Khemu—his weight leaning against him and his humming. Cautiously, not knowing exactly  _how_ he's doing it, Elijah reaches out  _through_  the apple, and imagines washing away all the nasty surprises Juno had left there. It's working. Maybe? It feels like it's working, so Elijah keeps going.

At one point, Khemu turns around to see how things are going, and gasps. "Is that…?"

Elijah has to shake himself slightly out of the intense focus he's fallen into so that he can see what had surprised Khemu—he feels disturbingly disconnected from the outside world right now, lost in the apple and his grandpa's mind. But when he looks, he sees this sort of… black, sludgy fog being suctioned out of his grandpa, and into the apple.

"Gross," Khemu mutters, and turns around again. Elijah goes back to work. It's hard, and it's  _so_ slow. It feels like scrubbing an oil stain away with a toothbrush, only  _with his mind_ , and it's slow and exhausting and by the end of it Elijah is shaking slightly. The sludge is gone, though, and so is that feeling of wrongness that had been in his grandpa's head.

"He's all good," Elijah mutters, and he reaches out with his left hand—his right is still on his grandpa's forehead—to grip Khemu's. He's scared of losing this focus, and not being able to slip back into the right state of mind in time to help Elina too.

"Are you doing okay?" Khemu whispers.

"Just… stay with me," Elijah mutters. "Okay?"

Khemu squeezes his hand in answer, and doesn't leave.  _He doesn't leave_. When they get to where Elina is curled up with a stuffed animal, her hair in a messy braid and her mouth slightly open in her sleep, they sit back down in the same position as they'd been in before. Elijah faces Elina with the apple in his lap, and Khemu sits at his back.

It takes longer to help Elina, not because Juno had done anything more or worse to her than she'd done to Elijah's grandpa, but because he's so much more tired this time. When he's finally done, Elijah lets his hands go slack, and leans back with his eyes closed.

"I think I'm going to pass out now," he mumbles. The words are barely distinguishable, because he's too tired after all that to even move his mouth enough to form real words.

And then he  _does_ pass out.

When he wakes up, the apple is gone and he's back in his own bed. It's morning instead of the middle of the night, and Elijah has a headache that feels like it's going to split his head open. There's no one else in the room with him, so Elijah assumes he must have overslept. He pushes himself up, wobbling a little as he stands, and is halfway through finding clothes when Khemu comes looking for him.

"You're awake," he says, with obvious relief written all over his face.

"I wish I wasn't," Elijah mutters, rubbing his head. "Did you get me back in bed?"

Khemu nods. "You're not as heavy as you look," he says. "And I got the apple back to dad before he woke up, too."

Elijah hadn't even thought of that. "Thanks, Khemu," he says. "For.. you know, for everything. I don't know how I would have done that by myself."

Khemu gives him a serious look, then crosses the room and hugs him. "You're my best friend," he says. "You and Elina. If you think I'd ever let you do something like this by yourself, then—well then I guess you're wrong."

Elijah stiffens in surprise for a second—then he hugs Khemu back. "Thank you," he says. "I've never had a friend like you before."

The hug only lasts another second or two before both of them are stepping back, feeling slightly awkward in the way seven year old boys usually do after hugging. And then Elijah asks about his grandpa, and Khemu says he's fine, and then Elijah asks about Elina, and she's fine too, and then Khemu sticks his tongue out and drags Elijah downstairs for breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow the apple is a hard thing to make interesting. Sorry about that, I guess this is kind of a slow chapter. Lesson learned, back to Elina-Berg father-daughter cute next chapter.
> 
> (Although I will admit I enjoy Khemu and Elijah's friendship way too much)


	13. Chapter 13

Elina's been feeling really good all day.

Like…  _really_ good. She doesn't know, exactly, what the difference is. But there  _is_ a difference,  _she's_ different, or maybe—no. It's not that she's different, it's that she's finally back to normal. She's normal again, without ever really having noticed that she was different in the first place. It's like there's been a weight on her for the past few weeks, and now it's been taken away and she doesn't understand why or how or what it was.

Her dad notices too. Elina watches him watching her for most of the day, until she finally goes to sit with him after dinner. "Are you okay?" she asks. "You keep looking at me."

"Me?" He actually looks surprised for a minute. "I'm fine, but you've been…you've seemed much happier than usual, Elina."

She shrugs. "I guess I am." It's loud in the room around them, but quiet in this little corner. Elina has noticed that most of the other people here, except for Layla and Bayek, try to avoid her dad. It's kind of sad, actually, and sometimes she wonders if it makes him lonely.

"So are you feeling better than the last time we talked?" he asks, forming his question carefully.

When they'd argued, he means. Because she hadn't wanted to talk about Juno. Yesterday she hadn't been able to but today she just blurts it out. "Juno told me to do things."

He goes still. She sees it in his hands, which are always busy, as they go slack. "What," he says quietly. "Did she tell you to do?"

"Lots of things," Elina says. "Most of them were just… little things. Stay out of the way and be quiet and things like that. But she also had a plan, in case we were rescued, she…"

This isn't something she's thought about. It's not something she's been  _allowed_ to think about. Now she can, and she does, and she's horrified, "Dad, she told us that if—if anyone ever came close to killing her, we were supposed to stop them. I think… William more than me, 'cuz he's the Assassin, but… yea. But Dad, I didn't—it was  _her_ , not me, I wouldn't…"

"I know." He reaches over and Elina clings to him as he hugs her. "I know, Elina. You're a good girl, you wouldn't do that." He's holding her like he's afraid she's going to just evaporate on him, and Elina can't blame him because she's half afraid of that too. What if she still does those things Juno told her to do? She wouldn't be able to stop herself.

"It's over."

She doesn't move when she hears Elijah, but she feels her dad shift around her. "This doesn't concern you," he says.

"It's over," Elijah says again, still totally calm in that way he gets when he talks to grownups. "Whatever Juno was planning for them, it's not going to happen. They're not under her control anymore."

"How could you possibly know that?" her dad asks.

Elina doesn't think he notices the slight pause before Elijah answers, but she does. "I just know things," he says. "And I know you don't trust me, but sometimes Ijust know things."

"And this is one of them?" Elina's dad asks.

"Yes."

"Dad…" She believes him, even if her dad doesn't. She trusts him, first of all, and on top of that she can  _tell_ that something's different. "It doesn't feel like something I have to do anymore. It's different, Dad, I swear."

He pulls back, studying her face, and Elina studies him too. His eyes look wet, and she thinks he looks like he wants to believe her, and Elina wants to be believed. "I'm fine, Dad, I promise."

He sighs and hugs her again. "I can't lose you," he says. "I can't. I love you too much."

And even though she knows it's true, that's still not something Elina actually hears from him very much. She doesn't know what to say, so she just curls in closer to him. Behind them, she hears Elijah walking away, job done. She wonders how he  _really_ knows, and decides to ask him later.

"I'm going to talk to William too," her dad says. "And see if he has any more information about what happened, or why it stopped. I think it's a good sign that you can talk about this today, since you couldn't yesterday, but I still, I just—I want to be sure. As sure as I can."

"Yea," Elina says. She understands that's just how he is, that's how he's always been.

"But I love you," he says (for the second time in five minutes), surprising her. "I always will, Elina, okay? Even if you had done those…  _things_ Juno tried to make you do. I know it wouldn't have been your fault."

"I don't want to ever do those things," Elina says fervently. "Not ever."

They sit together for a long time after that. Elina can't make herself move away, not when her dad feels like the only safe place in the world right now. He's her dad, her hero, and he's always going to do everything in his power to keep her safe. It's not even a question, it's just a fact of her life.

"Thank you," Elina whispers, at last and her dad gives her a quick kiss on the top of her head. "Can you go play with Khemu now?" he asks. "I want to go have that talk with William."

-/-

Much later that night, after Elina has weaseled the full story out of Elijah and Khemu, her dad comes looking for her. "Well," he says. "I've been talking with William a lot today."

"And did he convince you?" she asks. Her friends had convinced  _her_ , but Elijah had insisted she never tell her dad what he did. She gets it, because he'd probably be pissed if he found out Elijah used the apple, but she hopes her dad's going to be okay with this.

"Yes," he says. "Yes he did." He looks as relieved as she feels. It's over, it's behind them, and Elina never has to deal with Juno again.

They spend time together that night, which they don't usually do. He's usually busy. But he makes a point of wrapping his work up early, so they can sit down together and watch Elina's cartoons on a spare tablet. "When all this is over," her dad says quietly. "I want to be better about spending time with you."

And Elina smiles, because she  _absolutely_ wants that too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elina and Berg continue to be hard to write! Whoops.


	14. Chapter 14

Khemu's never seen Elijah like this before.

He'd gotten a phone call from someone that really upset him, and wandered a little way away to talk in private. Khemu hadn't really been focused on listening to the conversation—it was in English anyway, so he didn't catch much of what Elijah was saying—but when it's over, there's something dark and flat behind his eyes.

"What's the matter?" Khemu asks.

"Nothing."

That's it—short, sharp, and to the point. Just  _nothing_. That's how Khemu knows that whatever's wrong, it's definitely something important. "Seriously," he says. "Khemu, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

He says it again in the exact same tone, and instead of asking again in the same way, Khemu stands up from where he's doing his homework, and follows Elijah across the room. "Okay," he says. "So I'm going to ask you again, but this time I want you to remember that it's your best friend asking, and not just some guy that you can just go around being rude to."

Elijah turns around, and there's a flicker of guilt in his stony expression.

"What  _happened_?" Khemu asks, and this time he gets a real answer.

"My dad called," Elijah says.

"And it sounds like it went bad?"

Elijah laughs without humor. "Yes."

"Okay," Khemu says, trying to sound in control of the situation. He holds Elijah's elbow and steers him toward the closest chair. Elijah sits down and Khemu stands in front of him. "So tell me what happened, okay? Maybe we can figure something out to help."

Elijah looks  _thoroughly_ embarrassed when he eventually starts talking. "So I never had my dad around," he says.

Khemu nods, even though he already knows this.

"But I do know—you know. What a dad is supposed to be like. I've seen you and your dad, and Elina and her dad, and I mean—just dads in general, right? Dads are  _great_ , but when I talked to mine it was like… he didn't even… it was like talking to a stranger."

"Well…" Khemu bites his lip because the first thing he wants to say would probably not be all that helpful. He reconsiders, and figures out a better way to phrase it. "Well," he says again. "He is a stranger, isn't he?"

"He's my  _dad_."

"Sure," Khemu says. "But you can't just expect him to be your best friend right off the bat. You have to start out as strangers so you can work your way up to being best friends." It's a natural progression to him. There is no scenario, in Khemu's mind, that does  _not_ end with Elijah's dad becoming his best friend. He doesn't even mind, even though he'd just called  _himself_ Khemu's best friend—it's a different kind of friend.

"I don't know," Elijah says, and even though he's not moving, Khemu can practically see him metaphorically backpedaling. He's been waiting for this for  _so long_ , ever since they found out together that Desmond is Elijah's dad, but now it's almost like he's too scared to give it a try.

"What's it called," Khemu says, pointing to Elijah's phone. "When you—texting, right?"

"Texting," Elijah says. "Yea, sure. What about it?"

"I'll remember the words eventually," Khemu mutters. "But you should text your dad. It'll be a little easier than calling him back up and trying to have a real conversation, right?"

Elijah stares at him, then admits, "Maybe."

"Don't give up on him," Khemu says.

"He's not even here," Elijah says. "He's never going to be here, I'm never going to even get to  _see_ him—

"Now you're just being dramatic," Khemu says firmly. "My dad says everything's going to be over soon, and then…"

But he can't quite finish that in his own mind. The truth is, he has  _no idea_ what's going to happen when all this is over. Deep down, he knows that he and his dada are never going to go home again. They're sort of… off in time. Khemu was supposed to die, and then his dad had lived for  _years_ and fought all of Egypt, apparently, and then Khemu had been saved but his dad still has all those extra years. Even though Khemu tries not to think about it, his dad is older than he remembers, he's from years in the future, and if they go back home they won't be going to the same time.

That's unacceptable. They need to stay together, which means they need to stay  _here_ , but what does that mean? What are they going to do here, once the world doesn't need saving anymore?

"And then… what?" Elijah asks.

"And then I guess you and your dad will be able to figure out what happens next together," Khemu says. He forces a grin onto his face, because he's supposed to be cheering Elijah up, not worrying about his own problems.

"I really want to," Elijah admits, and Khemu is relieved that he doesn't seem to have noticed Khemu's distraction. "But I just can't figure out how to get… I can't imagine how I get from where we are today to… I don't know, a normal life with my dad, and doing normal things, and… Khemu what if he  _hates_ me?"

"He won't hate you."

"Lots of people do."

"I don't."

Elijah huffs in exasperation. "You're  _different_!"

Khemu does not think he is different. Not in that way, anyway. He's different because he was born two thousand years ago and speaks a dead language, but he doesn't like the way Elijah looks at him and Elina and thinks there's something  _special_ about them because they'll put up with him.

"Listen, Elijah," Khemu says. "You deserve to have friends, and you deserve to have a dad, and  _I_ think that your dad is going to—I think that your dad already loves you, because I think that's what dads are supposed to do. So give him a chance. Send him a text and work your way up to a conversation and then see where things go."

Elijah bites his lip. Stares at the phone. Looks sheepishly back up at Khemu. "If it doesn't work out," he says. "And he hates me—"

"He won't."

" _If he does_ ," Elijah says. "Will you still want to be my friend?"

Khemu sighs, and reaches over to hug him. Elijah just looks so pathetically sad in this moment that he can't help himself. "Stupid," he says, fondly, and Elijah chokes out a little laugh. "Course I will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elijah and Desmond aren't going to get to meet for another couple of chapters, so I guess have some Elijah angsting?


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter onward is set after the end of Bayek, Through All Time. I just really wanted some cute epilogue stuff and I didn't want to put a full new fic up so... I'm just adding it in here.

"Thanksgiving is  _supposed_ to be a week off," Khemu complains. "Why are they giving us all this homework?"

"Because they  _can_ ," Elina says, with considerable bitterness.

"Just because you can do something," Khemu says. "It doesn't mean you  _should_." He reaches up and scrubs some snow out of his hair. It's Friday afternoon on the week before Thanksgiving, and they're walking back to his apartment to work on the  _stupid, mean Thanksgiving break homework._

It's freezing, and a light snowfall is getting heavier as they get close to home. Khemu is not in a great mood.

"We'll just get it done fast, and have the rest of the week to do nothing," Elijah says. They turn into the parking lot for the apartment building where Khemu lives with—and this is new—both his dad  _and_ his mom. She's not there full time, and Khemu knows her well enough by now to understand that she'd never be happy in one place. She's always off somewhere, either traveling the world or time traveling. She's supposed to be there now, though—

Unexpectedly, and lightning fast, Elijah dashes in front of Khemu and almost  _throws_ himself onto the stairs to block the other two from going up.

"Uh," Elina says. "Elijah? What's wrong?"

"We can't go up yet," Elijah says. His face is pale as a sheet, but his voice is steady and  _absolutely_ sure.

Khemu and Elina exchange a look, then look back at Elijah. "Why not?" Elina asks.

"I really don't want to say," Elijah says. His voice gets a little more high pitched, and Khemu frowns. Usually, when Elijah knows things, he'll tell them. He trusts them, so this is… it's weird.

"Elijah," Khemu says. "Seriously, what's—"

"Your parents are having sex in the apartment," Elijah blurts out, and then looks instantly mortified at having to say it out loud. Khemu feels his jaw drop involuntarily, and Elina starts to snicker.

"Are you  _sure_?" Khemu asks, although he already knows the answer will be yes. Elijah doesn't get a lot of ambiguity in the things he  _knows_. Khemu still doesn't understand exactly how that works, although he knows Aita has been explaining how it all works to Elijah.

"I'm sure," Elijah says.

There's a long, chilly silence while they all stand in the snow, thinking about how badly they suddenly  _do not want_ to go upstairs.

"We could go to my place," Elina offers. "It's a little bit of a longer walk, but I can pretty much guarantee my dad's not having sex with anyone, ever."

"Not right  _now_ ," Elijah says.

"Oh my God, Elijah!" Elina says, horrified.

"I just meant—you know, you exist, so he  _must_ have—"

"I don't want to hear it!" Elina almost shouts at him. "La la la la la!"

People passing the building are starting to stare. Khemu tugs on Elina's hand to get her moving and hooks Elijah's backpack to drag him along with them. "Okay," he says. "Let's get to your place then."

-/-

Khemu doesn't exactly  _forget_ about… that afternoon. He mostly just tries not to think about it, and as far as he knows it doesn't happen again. He doesn't walk in on them or anything, and Elijah doesn't bring it up, so… as far as Khemu is concerned, it just doesn't happen. Then, about three months later, on a Saturday morning, Khemu is on his way out the door to hang out with Elijah (Elina is learning to jump off tall things with Layla) when his dad stops him.

"Can you wait here a couple minutes?" his dad asks. "There's something we need to talk to you about."

Khemu isn't exactly going to say no, but even after only a few months of having both parents in his life, he's learning that when both of them want to talk to him at the same time, he's probably done something wrong. "Sure," he says, backing away from the door and sitting down on the couch. "What happened?"

"It's nothing bad," his dad says, and Khemu turns to his mom instinctively just to double check.

"I'm pregnant," she says, cutting straight to the chase.

Khemu immediately thinks of the sex. "Oh," he says.  _"Oh."_

"So in about six months," his dad says, picking things up from his mom. "You're going to have either a brother or sister."

"And are you going to—" It's hard to wrap his head around the fact that their family is about to grow. For so long, it was just him and his dad. Now his mom's here, most of the time, and they're living together, but it's just… it's still weird. And now there's going to be a baby. "Are you going to raise them here?" he asks. "In this century?"

"We haven't decided yet," his mom says. The two of them share a look, and Khemu can imagine the conversations they've been having. His mom will want the baby to know Egypt, at  _least_ as well as Khemu does and probably better. His dad will think it doesn't matter, as long as they're all together. "But we have time."

"Sure," Khemu says. "We'll figure it out." He takes a deep breath and stands up. "Thanks for letting me know."

"Are you alright with this?" his dad asks.

Khemu nods emphatically. He's  _surprised,_ yes. He's trying to purge the mental image of his parents making a baby,  _absolutely yes_. But he's good a taking care of people, he likes looking out for his friends and making sure they're all okay. He can  _totally_ do that for a baby. "I'm really,  _really_ alright with this," he says.

His mom still looks slightly worried, but his dad looks proud. Khemu, for his part, is wearing a smile that just doesn't fade as he heads out the door.

-/-

Elijah, contrary to general opinion, doesn't know everything about everyone. He knows more than he should, definitely, but he doesn't know everything, no one knows  _everything_. Khemu can tell the second he sees Elijah that his best friend has no idea what Khemu's just learned.

"What?" Elijah asks, looking up from his phone. "Why are you so happy?"

"My parents are going to have a baby," Khemu says.

Elijah puts the phone away and full out hugs him. "That's great," he says.

Like Khemu isn't already fully aware of that. "I know."

"You're going to be a great brother," Elijah says.

"Thank you," Khemu says.

Elijah backs away a little, and says, "You know this is because of the sex they had that one time."

Khemu smacks him on the shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Khemu has no idea how much sex his parents have had.


	16. Chapter 16

Elijah is getting used to Aita dropping in at odd hours, now that he's gotten the hang of time travel. He comes by maybe once a month, maybe a little less, and they talk. If he's being honest… Elijah has no idea  _why_. He's glad Aita keeps coming back, because the more they talk, the more chances he has to learn about the parts of himself that aren't exactly human. He's learning a lot about how to control the things he just  _knows_ , how it works and how to… not exactly turn it off, but focus it.

For the first time in his life, Elijah doesn't feel like he's totally at the mercy of the random knowledge that just comes popping into his head. He can have normal conversations with people. It doesn't work all the time, but when it does, it's  _crazy_.

But the point is that all that helps him. None of it helps Aita, and Elijah doesn't know why the isu keeps coming here. Whether he's trying or not, he can't get a read on Aita the way he can with anyone else, so he's a sort of mystery that Elijah really needs to solve. And the sooner the better, because he doesn't like being a step behind.

Aita likes to pop in during the middle of the night, when Elijah is usually still awake plowing through his homework, but his dad is asleep. Elijah isn't sure whether that's because he feels bad about statue-freezing his dad for all that time, or if he just wants the privacy to talk.

Either way, it means that Elijah is half asleep during a lot of the conversations he has with Aita, and today is no different.

"Oh," Aita says. "You were asleep again."

"Not—no. Wasn't… no." He yawns and sits up, painstakingly rearranging the order of words in that sentence. He'd been  _mostly_ awake, falling asleep on his chemistry textbook, which had been pretty uncomfortable. He shoves the textbook and his notebook onto the desk crammed against the wall next to the bed, then pulls his pillow onto his lap and hugs it. "I'm awake," he announces. "Mostly."

Aita studies him for a long moment, expression vaguely concerned—then it melts into a fond smile.

"What?" Elijah asks. He's been getting along with Aita, he's even at the point where he'd probably call them friends, but  _fondness_ is new. Aita is tens of thousands of years older than him, technically, because he'd been  _born_ tens of thousands of years before him, but in terms of years lived… Aita is less than ten years older than him. He's not old enough to look down on Elijah and be  _fond_ of him.

"You give me a lot of hope," Aita says. "I wish you could see…" He sighs. "No, you shouldn't have to see it. But the way humans live in my time is… different."

Elijah knows humans are enslaved in Aita's culture. They've never talked about it, he just  _knows_. It seems like they might be about to talk about it now, though, and frankly Elijah wishes he was a little more awake for this conversation. "What's it like for them?" he asks tentatively.

"Depending who you ask," Aita says. "They either live as cattle, or as slaves."

"Oh," Elijah says. It's not like that's massively worse than what he'd been expecting, considering what little he  _does_ know about the isu world. But it makes him feel weirdly unhappy to hear it said out loud. "What do you think?" he asks. "Cattle, or slaves?"

"Neither," Aita says, with the kind of expression that says even admitting this is shaking his whole worldview. "Because—when I look at them, they're almost mindless. They do as they're told because we control them. We don't let them do anything else, so we think they're incapable of it. Then I came here, and  _after_ you very patiently explained that you are not all as violent as I thought at first, I saw that you aren't that different from us. You're missing a sixth sense, and you're… small."

Elijah makes a face.

"Humans are smaller than us," Aita says, with a deliberate attempt at patience. "It's not an insult, it's a fact."

"Uh huh," says Elijah, who is shorter than his family, friends, and most of his classmates.

"My point is that those aren't big differences," Aita says. "The way you think is—you're the same as us, Elijah! You're the  _same_!"

"Shh!" Elijah says urgently, suddenly much more awake. "My dad's sleeping."

Aita calms himself. "I am sorry," he says. "It's just so hard to watch the way humans in my time are treated, and know that they deserve lives like this."

"So change it," Elijah says matter of factly.

"I've been trying," Aita says. "Don't you think I've been trying? But I went to the future—to here and now—to see what humans are like. But now that I've been here, no one will listen to what I have to say. If I'd come back and said  _humans are stupid and violent and should be wiped out_ I'd have been a hero. But what I'm saying isn't popular so I'm being shouted down."

Elijah is used to not being listened to. The things that he  _knows_ aren't usually the things that people are willing to share with him, and that makes him as unpopular as Aita is saying he's becoming now. "Do something about it then," he says. "Don't just talk to people,  _do_ something."

"It's not that easy—"

"It's never that easy," Elijah says. "If change was easy, it—we—there wouldn't  _be_ any change, we'd just already be there."

Aita looks at him, and a moment of silence passes between them. Elijah isn't sure what Aita's getting from him, but it seems to be something because after a while he nods and stands up. "I think I have an idea," he says. "Thank you."

"Glad I can help," Elijah says. He flops over onto his side. It is late, and he is tired, and he does want to go to bed. "See you—" A flash of knowing. "Tuesday."

A small smile flickers across Aita's face. "See you," he says. "On Tuesday."

-/-

It's very late for Aita, too. Different stars shine overhead when he gets home, stars that will have long burned out by the time Elijah is born. But there are cities on the ground, people asleep in the buildings, and the odd wandering night owl out on the streets. Aita joins them. He has half an idea for what he's going to do, but he hasn't quite worked up the courage to do it until he's coming up to the grim, three story building.

Aita has some pull in this city. There's a reason he'd been invited to the initial discussions about what to do with humans in the first place, and he uses—abuses, maybe—some of that power now, to get into the building. Not that the night guard really minds, because as far as he's concerned there's nothing valuable here.

Aita disagrees. He walks the halls, reading the signs on each doors he passes, until he sees what he's looking for and stops. Three, four, five breaths, and then he reaches out and opens the door to step through.

The sign on the door as he passes it says  _18 months-5 years._

Thirty human children lie unmoving on thirty plain gray mattresses in the small, square room in the human storage building. Not a one of them moves, or reacts in the slightest. They've been… turned off for the night. In the morning, human training technicians will come in, feed and water the children, walk them through the exercises they need to build strong muscles and healthy bodies, and then turn them off again until they're needed.

Aita's people do not use machinery much anymore. They have powerful computers, yes, including the small, portable ones that humans of Elijah's time call apples, and are used for (among other things) controlling the humans of  _this_ time. Instead of expensive, bulky machinery for their manual labor, they have… humans.

It's something no one questions, but… Aita is, now. He keeps thinking about Elijah, the human boy with his face and the  _wide_ range of emotions that people here still don't believe humans are capable of. He steps forward, and kneels next to the closest child. A little girl. Aita watches her for several minutes, learning everything he can about her through his sixth sense. She is three years (two months, one week, and six days) old. She was born here, in this building, in a nearly identical room two floors up. She has no name, no desires, no sense of self.

She is, in other words, absolutely typical for humans in this era.

Aita has brought an apple with him, and he pulls it out now. He cups it in one hand, and puts the other on the girl's forehead. Not necessary, but it'll help him to concentrate. This is different from anything he has done to a human before. He has taken from them, stolen their thoughts, broken their instincts, told them what to do and how and when. This is his first time trying to take away a lifetime worth of programing.

He's starting to wonder if he might be unintentionally turning her into a vegetable when he feels the muscles of her face shift, and then her eyes open. Aita watches, fascinated despite himself, as the first thoughts she's ever had form and flicker across her face. Then she bursts into tears.

-/-

Dawn finds Aita still on the floor, but now with the little girl on his lap. It had taken a good long while to calm her down, and Aita isn't sure what to do  _now_. Actions speak louder than words, Elijah had been right about that, but he's not sure in this moment whether this is the right action.

One human with her own thoughts in her head. One human that doesn't have to be a slave. In the grand scheme of things, how much difference is one tiny human going to make? And what is he going to do now?

The answer comes to him as the sound of isu footsteps becomes audible, heading down the hall toward him. Aita stands up, small child balanced against his hip, his most intimidating frown settling onto his face. When the technician opens the door, he's visibly startled to see Aita standing there. That gives Aita the chance to speak first.

"Whatever she's worth to you," he says. "I'll pay you. And then I'm going to take her away."

"And do  _what_ with it?" the technician asks. "It's not fully grown or fully trained, what are you going to do?"

And this is it. This is the change. This is where it has to start. A crowd of humans is a statistic. One little girl is a story, a start.

"Clothes," he says. "How long has she been wearing the same jumpsuit?" He doesn't pause for an answer. "Then toys. Books. Real food. A home, a life, an education." He swallows, realizing he's forgotten something important. "A name."

"But… why?" The technician asks. "It's only human."

"I've what I've been saying," Aita says. "Over and over. There's nothing  _only_ about humans."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *nervous noises* Every time I think I'm done with this verse, it keeps sucking me back in... 


	17. Chapter 17

Elina can sneak up on her dad these days. She doesn't even do it consciously, she's just… quiet. She's learning how to move without making a sound, or being noticed. She's learning how to climb, and jump, and fall (the most important lesson, apparently, but also the least fun). She's learning how to fight, which is not her favorite part but at least she gets to spar with Khemu. He's not particularly interested in becoming one of the Hidden Ones, he wants to go back to school and have as normal a life as possible.

But he's gotten a taste for fighting. He's keeping up with that.

She's so lost in her thoughts as she pads silently into the kitchen that she doesn't even notice her dad jump when he turns around and sees her there. "Elina."

"Morning," she says. "Have you seen the—"

"Elina," he says again, and she stops rummaging in the fridge for milk.

"Yea?"

He's looking at her in a way that makes her distinctly uncomfortable. "Dad?"

"I was just thinking," he says. "About when you were very small, and very sick, and the Templars came and traded the medicine you needed to get better for my… services."

"You killed people for them," Elina says. "I know." She's always known, in a vague kind of way, that her dad kills people. It  _means_ a lot more now that she's been through what she has and seen what she has and done what she has, but she's known for years and years.

"I thought," he says. "That was the best thing I would ever do, because I was doing it for you. And maybe it  _is_ the best thing that I will ever do—but."

"But what?" Elina asks, thoroughly confused by this point.

"But you will do much better."

Elina flushes, still confused but also pleased now, and she's trying to think of something to say when her phone rings. She glances down, sees Khemu's name, and ignores it. She's having a moment with her dad here. Then it rings again, and the moment is over.

"Go ahead," her dad says, gesturing at her phone. "Your friends are waiting."

" _Khemu_ ," Elina says when she's answered the phone. "What's so important you couldn't just text—"

"Mom's having the baby," Khemu blurts. "She's going to the hospital because Dad says it's safer even though she says she had me without an epidural but she's going anyway and Elina the baby's coming! Elijah's already here, can you come?"

"You called Elijah first?" Elina asks. He  _always_ calls Elijah first, because they've known each other longer and lived in the same place longer, but  _still_.

"Are you kidding?" Khemu says. "It's Elijah. I didn't have to call. Are you coming?"

Elina hesitates. She  _does_ have a math test she hasn't studied for. "Dad," she says, looking up at him. "Khemu's mom is having the baby, can I go be with him? For uh—moral support?"

"You mean play hooky," he says, raising his eyebrows.

 _"Daaaad._ "

"Go," he says. "I'll call you in sick, but—" He gives her a serious look. "Just this once." She squeaked something at Khemu then hung up the phone.

"Dad," she said. "They're having a baby!"

She was so excited when she left that she took the window, just for the fun of it, instead of using the front door.

-/-

Bayek's the only one allowed into the room with Aya while she's in labor, which is probably good. She's intense at the best of times, and Elina doesn't necessarily want to be in the same room as her while she's having a baby. Instead she hangs out with Elijah and Khemu in a waiting room, flipping through old magazines and making fun of the ads because there's nothing else to do. Khemu is definitely getting nervous though, and Elina tries to calm him down.

"Your mom's going to be okay," she says. "And so's the baby. People give birth here every day, Khemu."

"I know, I know," Khemu says. "But most of them aren't like my mom. Giving birth is like—it's awful, right?"

" _I_ don't know," Elina says. "I've never had a baby."

"It looks awful when people have babies on TV," Khemu says. "There's all that screaming and stuff. And my mom can be pretty intimidating. What if she scares the doctor away?"

It dawns on Elina then. "So you're nervous the  _doctor_ isn't going to be okay," she says. "Not your mom and the baby."

"They'll be fine," Khemu says. "We're a tough family. But…"

Elina laughs at him.

An hour later, when it's finally over, they're told that they can come in and see the baby. They crowd into the cramped room, where Aya is already up and on her feet (because if anyone could manage that, it would be her), a tiny lump in her arms. She looks tired, Elina thinks, but there's a sharp spark of pride in her eyes that Elina catches.

"Khemu," she whispers. "Your mom is a badass."

"I know," he whispers back, but he's looking more at the baby than at his mom, and Elina isn't super surprised when he slips away a few seconds later to join his dad at his mom's side.

Elina sidles over to Elijah instead, but doesn't say anything as the two of them watch the family together, Bayek and Khemu huddle close to Aya as she presses the newborn to her chest.

"His name is Akhom," Elijah says quietly.

Elina has to mouth it a couple times to get the pronunciation right. "Well they look happy," she says at last.

"They are," Elijah says, and for once Elina can't tell if he  _knows_ that, or if—well, he has eyes. He can see what's happening right in front of him.

"Elijah," Elina says. "Are we…"

"What?"

"Are we going to be happy now?" Elina asks. "I mean, after everything we've been through, do we get to just be happy now?"

"I'm not psychic," Elijah says. "I know a lot of things I shouldn't, but I can't just look into the future and know whatever I want."

"So you don't know?"

He shakes his head no. "But I mean… I hope so. Look at us. We're all back together, no one's trying to hurt us, there's a new baby, and we even have  _Aita_  on our side. I think things are going to go right for now."

"Really?" Elina really hopes true, and looking at Elijah, she can see that's all he's doing too. Hoping. Still, it's good to have hope.

Khemu comes over then, moving more slowly than he usually does, his baby brother tucked into his arms. "Do you want to see him?" he asks eagerly, and of course they do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, roadmap for what to expect from this verse. I have one more little oneshot chapter planned with Aita, to kind of set some things up for what's coming after that, which I'm only going to write if people are interested, so please let me know if this is something you would read! :)
> 
> I'm thinking the next fic is going to be set a few years into the future, and again it'll mostly focus on the Elijah-Khemu-Elina trio, probably at around college age for them. Simultaneously, Aita's story is going to be set as humans start to break free from the isu and revolt. The two stories are going to connect, although I'm not sure how yet because I am not that great at planning ahead! It will not have as much time traveling as other fics have had, and just focus on a modern plot and an isu plot. If anyone's interested in reading, and assuming I don't start trying to write it and just totally burn out, I'll give it a shot.


	18. Chapter 18

The little girl's name is Ana, and she has changed Aita's life.

When he first brings her home, she's so scared and confused that she sits in a corner and cries all day. She's shell shocked, Aita thinks, and he worries that he'll never be able to help her. For weeks, she barely eats, barely sleeps, barely looks at him or anything else.

And then, she adjusts. There's a heady, exciting period when it seems like Ana is bursting at the seams, growing into her own mind so quickly that Aita can barely keep up. There's the day he's in the kitchen and turns around to see she's left her safe little corner and has come up to watch him. There's the first time she smiles, the first time she plays, the first stumbling sentences out of her mouth. There's the first time she tells him no, tiny face twisted up in little girl rebellion as she refuses to eat her vegetables. There's every opinion she forms and every decision she makes for herself, and then there's the day when Aita looks at her and realizes that she's become her own person.

Of course it's not all easy. She's still human in a world full of isu, and she's still missing the sixth sense that the isu have that humans don't. People look at her like a freak, and she often struggles to communicate with people—beyond the fact that she's still a toddler and still learning the basics of how to communicate, even Aita sometimes has trouble remembering he has to  _say_ everything he wants her to know. She doesn't have that constant, low level  _knowing_  that isu have when they talk to each other, as vital as being able to read someone's body language or tone. Right now she's still too young to understand how much she's missing out on, but she's going to figure it out eventually.

"…'ita?"

He's pulled out of his thoughts by Ana herself, who has been running between the kitchen and her bedroom, playing some elaborate game of pretend. It's the kind of low level background noise he's gotten used to over the past few months, and he only notices it when it stops. Looking down, he finds Ana standing by his knee, waiting for his attention.

"Yes?" he says, shaking his worries away for the moment as he lifts her up onto his lap. She's so tiny, young and human, and it always makes her feel delicate and  _fragile_. Aita still has occasional nightmares of just… breaking her.

"Can we…" She plays with the ends of her hair, and Aita absentmindedly reaches out to pull her hand away before she can put the hair in her mouth. "Can we go outside?"

Aita doesn't blame her for wanting to go outside, but there are other families on this street, and those families don't like being reminded that Ana exists. He's already been warned more than once that if they keep seeing her around,  _thinking_ , they're going to have to do something. Aita doesn't know if that means they're going to take legal action, or… some other kind. He's not willing to risk it, and after a moment of focus he  _knows_ that one of those families is outside right now, a whole group of them.

"I don't think…"

Ana's expression is one of absolute disappointment. "Not going outside," she says.

He's going to have to figure something out. Something long term, something better than hiding her away forever. And then it hits him—not a perfect solution, but something that will work for now. "Not exactly," he says, standing up and balancing her against his side with one arm. "But I have an idea. We're going somewhere else."

She waits in expectant silence as Aita stands up and walks across the room, until she sees him pick up the apple. Then she shies away with a terrified little noise, arcing her back so sharply that Aita has to scramble to adjust his grip and not drop her. "Ana!"

"No!" she cries. "No,  _no!_ "

He looks down at the apple with a little twist of guilt. He's assumed that, since she hadn't been able to feel things, or think for herself before he came to her, that she doesn't remember any of it. Like he'd been a kind of on switch, turning her from a thing into a person.

Sometimes it still surprises him, how little he understands what humans go through. He should have thought of this. Humans under isu control are trained, they're clearly forming and retaining memories. He should have thought—

He puts the apple down, which at least makes her stop fighting to get away from him, and looks her in the eye. "Are you scared?" he asks her. The answer is obvious, but he has a vague idea that it will help her to talk about it.

"It's bad," Ana says, which Aita interprets as a yes.

"It can be," he agrees. "And there are people that will use it to hurt you, but it's just a tool."

"It's  _bad_ ," Ana says again.

Aita sighs. It's entirely reasonable for her to be so against it. "Can I show you?" he asks. "Do you trust me?"

Ana's eyes don't lie. She's too young, and she hasn't learned yet how to hide what she's feeling. He watches the conflict play out across her face, fear and sadness and something crushing that almost shuts her down. Then she reaches out for him, and Aita holds her tiny hand. "Promise?" she asks.

"I won't hurt you," Aita says. She nods reluctantly, and he lets out a little breath of relief. "Okay then," he says. "Okay." He picks up the apple, slowly this time, and focuses. Ana gasps when they slip out of time, and lunges forward to wrap her arms as tightly around him as she can.

By the time they reach the future, it's starting to hurt a little. Aita is relieved when she realizes they're standing on real ground again, and loosens her grip. "Where are we?" she asks, peeking around him.

"We're going to see a friend of mine," Aita says, and he's surprised by the words even as he hears them. After all he'd done to hurt these people, he's still come out ahead with a friend in Elijah. Most everyone else in this time is still holding an entirely justified grudge against him, although even that is gradually wearing away. Elijah, though? Aita has come to like talking to him.

He recognizes the place they're in now. After the fallout from everything that had happened with—well, with him—they had all had to relocate. Somewhere that people wouldn't ask questions about where they'd been, or how one of them had ended up two years older than he should have been. Elijah had moved with his father into a house outside of town, which Aita appreciates. He  _tries_ to keep himself out of sight when he visits, but there's only so much he can do about the fact that he's seven feet tall, and frequently appears out of nowhere.

" _Dad!_ " he hears from somewhere overhead, the word muffled through the ceiling.  _"Aita's here!"_

 _"Where?"_ the second voice shouts back.

_"Basement!"_

Ana tightens her hold as Elijah's footsteps come thundering down two flights of stairs, and then he's in the room with them, slightly out of breath from the run. He pulls up short when he sees Ana, visibly surprised. "Oh?" he says, face twisting up in confusion.

-/-

Elijah insists they go upstairs before they talk. Since both Khemu and Elina live in small-ish apartments, the basement here has become the default place they come to when they want to spar. That's the whole reason they'd moved here, because  _someone_ has to have a place the Hidden Ones can go to when they need to train, or plan, or—well, when a time travel from tens of thousands of years ago needs to show up for a visit.

He just never expected Aita to bring a tiny child with him, so the first thing he does is take them away from anything she might wander off and slice herself open with. Khemu and his parents are here with Akhom so often that the rest of the house is pretty much babyproofed.

His dad is in the kitchen, which makes Elijah sigh. He and Aita are  _trying_ to move onto friendlier terms, and they're slowly making progress, but this means at least two or three minutes of awkward small talk. While they get through that, Elijah turns to the girl—Ana, he knows vaguely—and tries to figure her out. She's definitely human, but there's something off about her. Of course, she might still be  _human_ if she's from Aita's time, but she's thousands and thousands of years behind them on the evolutionary tree. She just looks… different.

She's staring back at him too, eyes wide as she studies every square inch of his face. Then she says, "Why do you look like my daddy?"

"Uh—" Never mind that he has  _no_ idea how to explain Sages to a child. He's pretty thrown by  _daddy_ though. He crouches down in front of her as she continues to study him with curiosity. "How long has he been your dad?"

For the first time she looks down, playing with her fingers. "I didn't even tell him yet," she says matter of factly. "He might not like it."

Elijah glances over his shoulder. Aita is more difficult to read than anyone he's ever met, but he thinks he knows the right answer here. "You should tell him," he says. "You should definitely tell him."

The awkward small talk behind him is wrapping up. Elijah turns around and makes a beeline for Aita and his explanation. He needs to know how something like  _this_ could have happened, and Aita accommodates. Ana looks briefly worried when she sees Aita walking away, before Elijah's dad comes over to save the day with chocolate.

"I didn't really have a plan," Aita admits. "I just wanted to do something to help, so I thought I'd go see the kids. With adults—I don't know what kind of shape they'd be in after a life of taking orders, but a kid could bounce back. And she has."

"And you're—" her dad. "Taking care of her?"

"I think we've bonded," Aita says. "I like having her in the house, and I think she likes me."

"She definitely likes you," Elijah agrees. "But—what are you going to do? How are you going to raise her in a world that thinks she doesn't have a right to think?"

"Well," Aita says, and Elijah suddenly realizes this is what he came here for. "I was wondering the same thing, and then I thought of you. She's kind of in the opposite situation as you, growing up. You're the only person here with an isu sixth sense. She's the only person in my time that  _doesn't_ have one."

Elijah looks down. "It's not fun to  _think_  differently than everyone else does, and not understand why," he admits. "You should make sure she understands, when she's old enough."

"I will," he says. "But I also thought it might help her to spend some time here when she grows up. So she can see what it's like to fit in."

"Like a kind of summer camp," Elijah says.

"Probably," says Aita, whose culture doesn't have a concept of summer camp.

Elijah shrugs. "Sure," he says. "We'll help. Why not, right?"

He's surprised at the depth of the relief on Aita's face when he says, "Thank you."

"Sure," Elijah says again. Then, "There's something Ana probably needs to tell you. I don't know if she's going to want to, but… you should maybe push a little." He shrugs. "Just some advice."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a last little loose thread to tie up before starting the (hopefully) final fic in this series. Can't wait to see what awful title my brain comes up with this time!


End file.
